Rail making a comeback

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Interesting that as we have often suspected and discussed that the auto and petroleum companies and lobbies succesfully eliminated passenger rail service. Now it's dawning on North America it's time to come back.

The video explores this but my opinion is that the naysayers point to high costs of government funded infrastructure as the reason that rail will not move forward as it has in the rest of the world without any acknowledgement that governement is already paying for vehicle infrastructure without any questions. I'm sure you'll find it interesting. Post your comments back here after you watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qaf6baEu0_w

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Further on the discussion of rail in NS, the feds are pledging 20.1 billion dollars for infrastrucure country wide. NS is getting a $289,589,324 piece for transportation infrastructure and it's all going into roads!

I think a revival of passenger rail from Kentville to Halifax would be a money maker. Industry would follow. VIA proved it back in the day when they got their scehdules right unlike CPR that scheduled passenger rail to death on purpose.

Now with the current trend that sees fewer drivers licenses than ever before and with the government's responsibility to provide public transportation and economic development the time is right. Can the Valley truly ever become an agricultural giant again without rail? Can it be a happy place to live once more? Hard to believe it's listed as one of the unhappiest places in Canada along with the South Shore and the North Shore. Sad.

But would Kentville even play ball? Seems they prefer to deny their railway heritage. Maybe New Minas of Wolfville would be more receptive?

Take a look at the extensive analysis done in Australia to revive an abandoned branch line. Many parallels to NS and the valley. Net result was that transportation subsidies will always be required for maintenance of way just like highways but the net benefit of public transportation outwieghs vehicular transportation for both personal and industrial. Link to report at end.

Here's where I got this info:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/ ... se/425169/
https://nstir.maps.arcgis.com/home/index.html
https://nstir.maps.arcgis.com/apps/weba ... 2cff624b41
https://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/plan/l ... s-eng.html
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/d ... 3#image=15
http://rail2trail.org/media/pdf/FeasStudyDr12.pdf

[gt-fox]

I don't believe Kentville would ever play ball, not even as far as the former VIA station. When it came time to abandon Steam Mill, and Kentville to Coldbrook, only two parties were in favor of it. CP Rail and the Town of Kentville.

Just within the last few months, when interviewed by the CBC about the costs involved with the Yarmouth ferry a politician (I can't recall who, maybe the Minister of TIR or the NDP leader) considered the ferry service an extension of the public highway system. Despite what I would like to see, the political will just isn't there to invest the required capital to completely rehabilitate the roughly 55 miles of rail corridor to provide the kind of speeds required to make commuter rail attractive to potential users. It would be in the tens of millions of dollars.

To make an argument for the benefits from a renewed freight & commuter rail service on the entirety of the Halifax Subdivision (and Truro Spur!) here I believe is preaching to the choir. The current stink that is being made over the Windsor Branch and the application to have the operating license of the WHRC suspended or revoked are real obstacles to any kind of rail operation being re-established at all.

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IMHO, the NS government has thrown good after bad trying to get tourism and industry to return and yet at the same time has forgotten it was the railway that brought them and it all went away with the demise of rail.

This site hopefully is a constant historical reminder of that.

If they can spend over a quarter billion (289 million) dollars on highways, they can spend the $$ on rail. Mind you they should have maintained the rail they had rather than turn it into trails. The optimum time to have stepped in to protect that asset they got for essentially free is nearly 30 years past. But a short sighted government literally burned their bridges. It doesn't mean however that it is insurmountable. Take the Windsor line over and extend it to Wolfville or New Minas at least for a start. At least the valley has a gateway that way.

[gt-fox]

I agree with you that our government hasn't gotten much of a clue when it comes to investing its dollars where it counts. One also can't deny that the successes of the W&A and the DAR had putting Nova Scotia on the map. This website is a testament to that. But those days are long past. I think to convince those in power to invest in restoring a publicly operated commuter rail service, we have to sell them on the benefits and returns of rail to the local and provincial economies. Provide assistance (like Grants / Loans) for shortlines to invest or improve their infrastructure to make them more viable. I wrote several MLAs to that effect last summer. The ones who replied were receptive to the value of rail in the future as the population and economy of the eastern end of the Annapolis Valley continue to grow. But to make any momentum of it, they would have to see some widespread or at least a vocal support of rail service (Freight or Commuter). Perhaps lobbying was a key factor in the demise of rail, but maybe it can play a role in its revival. But its all good money for bad if combined freight and passenger traffic isn't there. There have been enough studies on rail locally, the atlantic gateway strategy and a LRT study in HRM to show the value in all of this, the recommendations need to be acted on.

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Yup. On the same wavelength here.

So let's get Windsor, Wolfville, New Minas and Kentville (if Kentville will play) back on the rails in the form of regular commuter rail and light freight service.

Unfortunately, times have changed and with car ferries coming in from across the bay and into Yarmouth from the US, the day of rail tourism is all but over. The WHRC proved it too with their failure to make tourist rail viable. However, visitors to Halifax might entertain a day trip that takes them to The Land of Evangeline. I could be a side to regular commuter service to the top of the valley.

I think the biggest stakeholders that need to join together would be the Windsor, Wolfville, New Minas and Kentville councils along with Scotian Gold, Michelin, Acadia U and the Kentville Business park where the terminus could be. It's a perfect as it's right beside the 101 as well so everyone coming up the valley to catch the train would have convenient access.

If valley residents stand up to be counted on this issue that would bring traffic and economy to the valley I'm sure their voice would be heard. Joe Howe wouldn't take no for an answer.

[gt-fox]

I’m not sure I would consider the Excursion trains a complete flop, I recall reading somewhere the reason they stopped was related to workforce or a lack of for the weekend detail. It was a fairly high profile excursion, which I think could still be a success today.

Getting the Towns and Municipalities on-board to embrace any kind of rail revival is going to be a tough sell that’s for sure. I can’t vouch for Kings Co, Wolfville or New Minas, but I know Windsor, East & West Hants, HRM and a group from Mount Uniacke all have expressed interest in acquiring some or all of the WHRC’s corridor for trails. Some have been pushing rather aggressively to have the rails yanked. This in my opinion is the issue anyone interested in rail transport coming back to the Annapolis Valley should be following.

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I normally don't like government getting into the private sector but in this case, it IS infrastructure, they DO have the money and they have not managed the economic development of the majority of the province well. Howe pushed and succeeded in connecting valley residents and it spawned huge economic development and private enterprise investment. Can the government say the same thing for 100 series highways for the huge amount of money they've spent on them?

[gt-fox]

Arguing the point here won’t accomplish much, basically an echo chamber. Contact your MLA / MP or Municipal Councillor is the most practical way of making your voice heard. How do you think the Uniacke Trails Association has made it as far as they have taking on the Windsor & Hantsport Railway? They’ve lobbied hard to anyone that would listen. That can go both ways fortunately.

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You are quite right. Action needs to be taken at ground level to make anything happen.

I was hoping to find consensus or dissent not only from you but from others that have read this topic to see if anything spoken of here would generate some enthusiasm and support sufficient enough to present a lobby effort.

I thank you for being the sounding board for this topic!

[gt-fox]

I don't mean to be a buzzkill, lol. Ive pitched my argument to friends who arent interested in the topic, and it keeps my expectations realistic but also shows what should be focused on.

[Alexandre Stuart]

I know of a tourist railway in France that is bringing a line back from nothing. It was a mountain pass line (between France and Switzerland) used on one of the earliest routes of the Orient-Exprees, until 1915, when a longer tunnel of 6.1km was finished, thus relegating the original line to branch service. Half of the line was abandoned after the second world war, because the germans blew up one of the entrances to the tunnel (it is said that the train that brought Pétain back to France as a prisoner took the damaged line), The second half of the line was taken out in 1969, during a short period of massive cuts to the network. In 1993, there was a small fair in a village along the line, and a few people built around 2-300m of track to run small trains on it and said they weren't taking it out. Fast-forward a few decades, in a few years, they will be reconnecting the line to the French network (not in its original configuration that used to pass through a rock cut, as houses have been built on the ROW,(Sound familiar )) and running ski trains to the village in the middle of the line as part of a program to revitalize that ski hill. If all goes well, in a decade or so, they will dig out the entrance to the tunnel that was blown up(that has the police station built in its place albeit higher(they said it could be done)). They now have two operating steam locomotives, one German WW2 2-10-0 and one Swiss tenderless 0-6-0. They have done this largely by themselves and although it does help to run along a road that sees a large portion of Franco-Swiss international traffic, if they hadn't taken the initiative to rebuild, the French network wouldn't bother rebuilding the line to Switzerland even if it means a whole lot of commuter traffic.

I think that disregarding population density, this example is similar to that of the DAR in that if we wanted to see trains return to the valley, we would have to do it ourselves. The wine industry is boosting tourism in the valley, and I think that if the wineries run busses, they would love jointly owning and operating a tourist train. Everyone knows the Napa Valley wine train example, and how much of a cash cow that is. If we could operate a wine train and a regular excursion train, maybe have two halves to the train like the Kettle Valley SR does (with its ex-CP passenger cars and its modified stock cars), that combined with people on board telling people stories, showing the amazing scenery and making people have a good time would be extremely popular. And eventually, if enough money were made to get a steam loco after a few years (why not save 999 from hall 6 at Delson which are both falling apart) That would be even better. I am 19, and as a kid I lived in the UK. I remember vividly being shown the inside of a fired up loco around christmas time at the Bluebell railway (IIRC). I must have been around 6, and that memory will stick around forever, that must have been one of the defining moments in my childhood that made me love trains (unless it is a genetic sort of virus lol). Whatever people say, steam trains have been and always will be a source of amazement and awe in youngsters and old hoggers alike, and people would come to see it. Most of the people who knew steam are gone, but if there was love for it then, there sure could be love for it now. Anyway, that's the end of my little rant on the state of present-day Canadian steam.
But if this hypothetical tourist railway were viable, the line could then easily be reopened for freight to new Minas, which, once the tracks relaid, would add additional revenue, and eventually, working with the province and CN might yield the long awaited commuter service to the valley (I don't know the current state of the WHRC and their running rights that came with the Windsor branch, but this is the best weapon against CN there is (if it still exists) and I really don't understand why it seems that HRM didn't look into that (I sent a message to Tim Outhit about that and he just gave a generic thank you for your advice...)).

If I had the money for it, this would be a business venture I would invest in, and as always, the key word is money... But if we pooled our resources, I believe it could be done.

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I couldn't agree more as I have already written about returning service from Halifax to New Minas. It is difficult from afar though to imagine how this might actually happen. Local interest and money need be drummed up by literally going door to door from Windsor to New Minas. The province has no interest whatsoever having invested in the 100 series highways so any semblance of rail as a viable mode of transportation needs to be a vision at the local level to drive it though.

[Alexandre Stuart]

Does anyone know what the WHRC would be willing to do? I saw in an old thread that Matt was looking for people to join him in talks with Bob Schmidt on the topic of tourist operations, has the landscape changed enough for the decision to change now. Also, Jeff Keddy has been talking about the mines reopening on fb, any news? When I was in NS last winter, I met the old captain of the Otis Wack, and he said that if they were to reopen, they would use barges straight from the mines to the US, without having to use the WHRC. He also said that the loader in Hantsport was a test run, and they could easily dismantle it to build it somewhere else. I find it all hard to believe...If it was a test, they probably would have dismantled it by now.

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I don't think anyone knows what the WHRC intends to do. No idea what the game is but it seem to be a waiting game for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Pity.