1 November 2005
Westward Expansion
"The Canadian Pacific Railway's crossing of the Continental Divide is a combination of scenic
grandeur, national mythology, human spirit, and technical innovation unique in North American railroading."
It would be difficult to come up with a more appropriate characterization of the right-of-way that stretches from Calgary
to Vancouver than this one from Railway Age Contributing Editor Greg Gormick. CPR's $160 million Western Capacity Expansion Project
(Westcap) brings this description into sharper focus. Not since the mid-1980s, when the Mount Macdonald Tunnel and the
shorter Fox Tunnel near Revelstoke were blasted and drilled through the rugged Selkirk Mountains in British Columbia in one of the
industry's greatest feats of engineering, has CPR built this much new track infrastructure.
Concentrated between the Prairies and Vancouver, Westcap kicked off a program that could see CPR invest up to $500 million over the
next five to ten years in additional capacity. Completed last month, Westcap's primary purpose is to accommodate rapidly increasing
exports of Canadian resources and commodities like metallurgical coal, potash, and grain through the Port of Vancouver, as well as
surging imports of containerized cargo arriving at Vancouver from the Pacific Rim. Now, CPR has the capacity to run 38 trains a day
across the Rocky Mountains - an increase of four train slots, or more than 400 freight cars, per day.
"We looked at our capacity a couple of years ago and made some educated guesses, placing a bet that the market would remain
strong," says Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Fred Green. "Our read was correct. We were at a turning
point, on the thin end of the wedge. We could not assume we would have enough capacity." That's primarily why the decision was
made to move ahead with Westcap, an add-on to CPR's $760 million 2005 capital program.
Westcap was conducted under traffic in CPR's busiest corridor, with minimal disruption to normal operations, and 80% of it consisted
of new construction. At 25 locations stretching from Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan Province through Calgary and Vancouver, more than
530,000 feet of premium rail, 103,000 wood and 34,000 concrete crossties, 300,000 tons of ballast, and special trackwork were installed.
The capacity enhancements included siding and double-track extensions, higher speed universal crossovers,
fully-signaled sidings, curve realignments, and helper locomotive staging/setoff tracks. CPR crews worked
side-by-side with prime construction contractor PNR RailWorks to build infrastructure designed by general engineering
contractor Hatch Mott MacDonald. CPR trains now benefit from minimum siding lengths of 10,000 feet as well as seven locations where
existing double-track has been extended. Add to that approximately 13 universal crossovers and 90 upgraded siding turnouts.
Premium, non-panelized welded turnouts from Progress Rail's Winnipeg facility ranging in size from a minimum No. 16
(35 mph) to No. 20 (45 mph) were assembled on site or at staging areas.
Signaling and traffic control improvements complete the picture. CPR converted all dark sidings to full CTC, which provides locomotive
engineers with a more favorable signal ("medium" instead of "restricted") and a doubling of speed, from 15 mph to
30 mph. Safetran Systems supplied pre-wired bungalows for interlocking upgrades; Union Switch & Signal and Alstom
microprocessor-based technology is being used in combination with relay-based equipment. Previously, only
ends of sidings had full CTC control.
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