Canadian Pacific announced that it would reopen its railway between Kamloops, B.C. and Vancouver by mid-day Tuesday, Nov. 23. Crews have worked around the clock after the Nov. 14 atmospheric river rain storm in British Columbia, where nearly 200 millimetres of rain fell over two days in some locations. Thirty locations across CP’s Thompson and Cascade subdivisions were damaged with 20 resulting in significant loss of infrastructure.

As CP resumes operations and moves from restoration to recovery, CP will closely coordinate with customers and terminals to clear the backlogs as quickly and efficiently as possible. Success will require collaboration across the supply chain with urgent weekend work and flexible schedules at customer and terminal locations to help get freight moving efficiently again.

To repair the railway infrastructure, CP crews:

• Moved 150,000 cubic yards of material to rebuild the damaged areas, equivalent to 10,000 tandem dump truck loads or 30,000 one-ton dump truck loads of earth, riprap (rock) and other construction material
• Utilized more than 80 pieces of heavy work equipment
• Mobilized hundreds of CP employees and contractors from across the network

While the railroad may have reopened, there remains a difficult road ahead for B.C. residents and businesses impacted by this event. CP continues to work closely with local and B.C. authorities and Indigenous communities in the Fraser Canyon to coordinate the delivery of critical materials, equipment, food and fuel.

CP teams arranged food delivery to the Spuzzum First Nation, secured 10 portable generators to be delivered to the Cooks Ferry First Nation and arranged meals, milk and baby formula for the Boston Bar Food Bank.

Throughout this crisis, CP has closely coordinated and partnered with the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. CP, for example, is facilitating the reconstruction of the grade for the railway infrastructure and also the Trans-Canada Highway at Tank Hill west of Spences Bridge. That partnership has fostered the ability to efficiently redirect Ministry equipment to other recovery sites to support highway repairs.

Such coordination has been critical to this recovery. Even before the storm, there was recognition that priority access would speed recovery. Critical infrastructure designation helped accelerate CP’s recovery as equipment was positioned during the storm then deployed immediately following.

-via Press Release