Volume 13 Number 3 February 9, 1983

Railway to Spend Millions on Shops

A New Angle: Approximately $70 million has been earmarked in 1983 by CP Rail for construction or improvement to car and locomotive repair shops across Canada. Each year, CP Rail performs more than 300,000 light running repairs and 4,000 major overhauls to approximately 1,300 locomotives and 65,000 rail cars.

In preparation for the increased demand on equipment as bulk commodity exports grow this decade, the railway will spend $32 million on maintenance and repair facilities across Canada. The projects will create about 360 additional permanent railway jobs.

The biggest expenditure, about $13 million, will be made on the new diesel repair shop at Weston Shops in Winnipeg.

When in operation at the end of the year, the $16 million facility will be the largest of its kind on the system and will be equipped to maintain 450 locomotives, more than a third of the motive fleet.

The facility will have an outdoor fuelling area, tracks for sorting units for repairs and maintenance, and indoor repair and service facilities.

Building began last spring and will provide about 150 construction person-years of work. It will mean an additional 200 permanent jobs.

Meanwhile, the wheel shop at Weston will be expanded to enable the company for the first time to salvage and re-profile single wheels and to match them for re-use.

The facility is expected to save the railway $2 million annually, turning out 6,500 reclaimed wheel sets each year.

About $2.5 million will be spent this year to extend the shop. When the expansion is complete in 1985, the total cost will amount to $5 million. The project will provide 75 construction person-years of work.

On the Pacific Region, $8 million has been allocated to start a $40 million car repair shop and yard expansion project at Golden, B.C., to handle anticipated growth in western coal traffic.

The shop will repair rotary-dump cars used to transport the coal. Construction will provide some 300 person-years of work and 100 permanent jobs on completion.

Construction will also begin on a $15 million car repair and diesel shop at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, with $4 million budgeted for the work this year.

The shop will be used for light repairs on freight cars and locomotives as well as for maintenance of yard engines. The project will create 250 person-years of construction work and provide an additional 50 railway jobs.

Some $400,000 will be spent at the Alyth diesel shop in Calgary to improve working conditions. In Montreal the railway will spend $2.5 million in this, its third year of a five-year, $8 million program to modify the Angus shops locomotive repair facility and construct a waste treatment plant and paint shop.

Angus is being modified to speed up repair work by modernizing facilities and equipment, and implementing a systematic overhaul procedure for the cleaning and rebuilding of locomotives.

The shops will become the main repair facility for locomotives used in Eastern Canada, with a capacity to overhaul up to 150 units a year. The improvements will reduce locomotive down-time by almost 20 percent.