Thursday, March 20, 2008

CN Makeing a return?


In the past few weeks all has been quiet in regards to the CN take over of NBEC and CFMG however in the past few months there has been a lot of talk about CN buying back the Mont Joli and Newcastle subs and a few other subs as well. My biggest question is Why? Why does CN want all the lines in NB and Quebec that it sold back in 1994-96? Persoanlly I have mixed feeling about them coming back to the North Shore. All the scuttlebutt I've been hearing isn't good of course but I'd like to focus on the positive aspect of CN returning. On the lighterside they could very well bring with them more jobs to the already dead or dieing North Shore for example. Part of the rumor is they (CN) wants to abandon it's Napadogan sub for the Newcastle sub because the bridges are smaller and less costly to maintain. That would mean CN would be bringing more freight through here from Halifax more container traffic and speaking of which Belledune is looking at opening up a container facility so there is more jobs as well and more rail traffic.

More rail traffic would mean more jobs, you'll need people to shunt freight around and put more trains together and you'll need more people to maintain the rails etc etc. More rail traffic also means less clutter on our highways from trucks and better maintained highway infrastructure as well. (Per se) the provincial governement would "want" to put more money into it's railway infrastructure as well and who knows what could happen from there on, I am looking to the future with high hopes as far as a CN take over goes, I know not everything about it will be all peaches and cream however who knows eh? I think with the majority of it all I think it'll be a positive thing for the North Shore economy. I'll add more to this at a later date.

(The above picture was taken by Phil Ross and used with permission from Phil Ross. The picture is of CN 8826 in Dorchester NB as CN freight 120. Thanks Phil!)

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