CP Railway completes first stage of capacity expansion project
Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) has completed an 8,500-foot track at its Coquitlam yard near Vancouver for trains of Canadian bulk commodities destined for ships calling at the port of Vancouver.
The staging track took five weeks to construct and required 285 tons of steel rail, 4,250 crossties and 5,640 tons of rock ballast.
The new track marks the completion of the first of 25 projects under a C$160 million ($128.6 million) program to increase train capacity on the CPR’s network between the Prairies and the port of Vancouver.
CPR said that almost all of the 25 capacity expansion projects are now under way. All the projects are expected to be complete by the fourth quarter, when CPR said it will be able to run an additional four trains daily — or more than 400 freight cars a day — representing a 12 percent increase in capacity between the Prairies and the port of Vancouver.