6 May 2009
End of the Line for Train Traffic?
Petawawa Ontario - No one seems to know for sure,
but it appears the Ottawa Valley may be facing the end of freight traffic on its remaining rail line.
Petawawa Mayor Bob Sweet raised the issue at last week's meeting of Renfrew County council.
Sweet noted that, until the night before the meeting, no trains had run through Petawawa for about a week.
The lone exception was a 72-car train late that Tuesday night.
Sweet said he had heard reports of layoffs, but that officials with the Ottawa Valley Railway - the short track railway that operates
the former Canadian Pacific rail line between Smiths Falls and Sudbury - were nowhere to be found.
"I'm at a loss to find out what's actually happening," Sweet said.
"I would have hoped that an industry going through our communities would have had the common courtesy to pick up the phone and
call."
Laurentian Hills Mayor Vance Gutzman agreed, saying he has spoken to railway employees who received layoff notices in Chalk River.
Gutzman noted that last year, OVR announced they were going to increase the cost of easements the municipalities pay where local
services cross the railway land by 300 percent.
"They had no problem getting hold of us then, but now when we need answers, they're nowhere to be found," he said.
"If there is a move afoot to drive a last spike through the heart of this region's historic economy, I think we need to find out
something about it."
OVR took over the CP line through the Ottawa Valley in 1996, after CP announced they would no longer use the track.
OVR was later bought out by RailAmerica, a conglomerate of short track railways with its headquarters in Jacksonville, Florida.
Reports out of North Bay suggest the local railway may be caught in the middle of a dispute between RailAmerica and Canadian Pacific
over who pays to maintain the rail line.
Layoff notices were issued to about 30 employees after CP decided to reroute its traffic over its own lines from Montreal, south
towards Toronto, and then back up to Sudbury.
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