Railroad Forums
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Some Cape Bretoners are calling for immediate repairs to the crumbling rail line that runs across the island, regardless of whether a proposed container terminal gets built in Sydney harbour.
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Blue Morrison, whose father worked on the railway, said she has seen missing and worn ties, varied spacing between the rails, the railbed eroded by rain or floodwater and saltwater deterioration of the railbed along the Bras d'Or Lake.
She would like to see trains bringing cruise ship passengers from Sydney to the Highland Village Museum in Iona, N.S., and farther down the line to the Orangedale station.
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Steve Smith, a Coxheath, N.S., resident who lives on Bungalow Road near the Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia Railway tracks, recently shot some drone footage of a huge washout near his home and another farther west toward Point Edward.
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Charlie MacLean, co-chair of the Scotia Rail Development Society, agreed. The society was formed in 2015, just as the rail owner, Genesee & Wyoming, stopped running trains across Cape Breton and signalled its intention to abandon the line altogether due to a lack of demand.
"We want to see trains running again and we would like to see the track and the track bed owned by the province and not by a owned-from-away company that can do with it as they wish upon their whim or other financial concerns," MacLean said.
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In 2014, Genesee & Wyoming said rail traffic had fallen far below the amount needed to make the line economical and an annual subsidy of $2 million was not enough to keep it going.
The last train ran across Cape Breton heading for the mainland in October 2015.
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