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CILTWorld issue 9
MULTI-MODAL
Canadian Expressway —
‘a passenger service for trucks’
by Alan Marshall
WHILE a £10 billion project strives to win approval in
the UK to take up to 10,000 lorries a day off Britain’s
motorways, a Canadian railway is showing the
benefits of a similar scheme between Montreal and
the mid-west USA.
The British proposal would see ‘piggy-back’
trains taking lorry trailers from a series of depots
to the Channel Tunnel. The ‘Central Railway’
route would relieve motorways of some five
million lorry journeys a year, its backers claim.
Central Railway would extend beyond the
Channel Tunnel to Lille, in Northern France, and
is reported to have attracted the support of the
French government.
In Canada and mid-west America a similar
cross-border scheme is already winning large
volumes of ‘piggy-back’ lorry trailers from the
roads. Launched in 2002 by Canadian Pacific
Railway, one of Canada’s two railroad giants –
after three years of trials and £20 million
investment – the service is dubbed Expressway,
with huge trains speeding daily between the
eastern port of Montreal (Quebec), Toronto
(Ontario), Windsor (Ontario) and Detroit
(Michigan, USA).
CP Rail – which is Canada's second-biggest
railway with a 22,500-kilometre (14,060 mile)
network stretching from Montreal to Vancouver,
and into the U.S. Northeast and Midwest region
– is also making major investments in new
intermodal rolling stock (see page 19).
Because the Port of Montreal is 1,000 miles
along the St Lawrence River inside Canada, more
goods to and from mid-west USA travel this way
than via east coast US ports, such as New York.
Montreal now handles more than one million
containers a year – half of them coming from, or
going to, locations in the United States.
So successful has been the service , at the time of
writing Expressway is to extend south to Chicago
(Illinois), and in Canada eastwards to Quebec
City. A service from Toronto via Montreal to New
York is also planned.
Each train 1.8km long
Each Expressway train is 2,000 yards long — that’s
nearly one and a quarter miles (1.8 km) – and
operates at 100 km/h (60mph), hauled by three or
four diesel locomotives, depending on their
power. The journey between Montreal and
Toronto takes five hours and road hauliers can
book up to a year in advance to get their trailers
on the trains.
All customers negotiate their own prices with
CPR, as there is no regulation of costs and charges
on Canadian or American railways, but a typical
rate to carry a trailer between Montreal and
Toronto would be around £200 ($330), CPR
officials told me.
The ‘secret’ of CPR’s Expressway operation is the
rapidity with which lorry trailers are loaded onto
the rail wagons and the trains are despatched.
Each train is divided into 10-wagon articulated
sections and trailers are parked in order for
loading. CPR claims that 95% of road tractor
units leave a terminal within 15 minutes of
delivering their trailers. All paperwork, including
bills of lading and customs documentation, is
computerised as part of the pre-booking
arrangements.
“Expressway is basically a passenger service for
trucks,” said Ray O’Meara, CPR’s general
manager of Expressway. “We don’t compete with
truckers because we don’t deal with shippers.
Rather, we are a wholesaler of line-haul services
for truckers. What we are saying is that we think
we can help the truck industry become more
profitable.”
Expressway is also popular with trucking
companies because of the growing shortage of
truck drivers in Canada and the USA, where the
industry is attracting fewer recruits each year.
The CPR procedure is very efficient, with just two
tractor drivers and two supervisors on the ground
being responsible for loading the whole train,
keeping in touch with each other and with the
train driver by two-way radio.
After consignments have been delivered to a CPR
terminal, diesel tractor tugs push each trailer up a
portable ramp onto its designated rail wagon. A
support then rises from the floor of the wagon to
replace the ‘fifth wheel’ on the tractor unit and to
hold the trailer securely in place. The trailer’s air
brake lines are detached and the tractor tug unit is
removed. The loading process takes just one
minute.
Many refrigerated trailers are carried, but no
power supplies are necessary on the train because
of the quick loading and transit times. Instead
trailers are fully charged to maximum coldness
before departure.
As each 10-wagon set is loaded, it is shunted into
line by the train locomotives until the massive
trainload, 2,000 yards (1.8 km) long, is all coupled
together. Brake tests are done as each section is
coupled to the train so, within a minute or two of
the last set of wagons being hooked up, the train
is ready to head off at 60 mph.