Company fixing Churchill rail line says repairs will be complete in 60 days

Repairs to theChurchill rail line will be complete in 60 days, according to one of two companies doing the work.

"We have been mobilizing pretty much ever since Friday," said MarcBreault, president and founder ofParadox Access Solutions, anEdmonton-based company hired to repair the railway tracks.

The repairs are set to begin Sept.8. Breaultsays his company's chief engineeris already in Gillam, Man., assessing the situation. The goal is to fix the tracks in under two months so that winter weather conditions don't delay the project, he said.

"It's very doable, the only challenge is weather. We're late in the season and weather could be ahindranceto completing that project, all depending on how much into October do we get ... we're looking at every angle to attack this as aggressively as possible,"saidBreault.

"At the end of the day, our goal is to get the train tracks running again, so that the remote communities can get back to just living a normal life and not worrying about high costs of food and necessities."

Churchill, a community of roughly 1,000 people and Canada's only deep-water Arctic port, has been without aland route since the railway flooded in May 2017. For the past 19 months, the only way in or out of the remote northern Manitoba community has been by air or ship.

That's driven up the costof fuel and food and left a number of people stranded in the town.

On Friday, the federal government announced the railway and the Port of Churchill have been purchased from Denver-basedOmnitraxInc. by Arctic Gateway Group,a private-public partnership that includesMissinippiRail,Fairfax Financial Holdings andAGTFood and Ingredients.

• Railway to Churchill, Man., sold repairs to begin 'immediately'

Accommodations anotherchallenge

Most of the workers who will repair the tracksare from Manitoba, but for a specialized team of eight who are coming from Edmonton.Breault says it's been a challengefindingaccommodations to hold the more than40 people who will travel to Manitoba's north to do the job.

"It's such a remote area in Manitoba that there's not a lot of ability to get our people up there immediately. So we are making arrangements to get a camp in place so our people canarriveand do theirspecialty," said Breault.

Paradox Access Solutions specializes in ground stabilization and providing access to remote locations. It has worked on a number of pipeline, oil and gas, and roadwayprojects across Canada. In 2016, it was one of the first companies on the ground to assist during the FortMcMurray, Alta., wildfires.

"Within eight days, we had 40 kilometres of temporary access roads," said Breault. "We're sort of the guys that nobody really thinks about ... creating access so that everyone else can do their jobs."

In Churchill,Breaultsays his company will stabilize the ground under the railway, and another company which wants to remain anonymous will come in and repair the tracks.

He says his company will use Tough Celltechnology for therepairs a geocell technology inventedin the 1970s by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineersto strengthen unpaved roads in order to hold heavy military vehicles.

"This is state-of-the-art technology that really has never been tried before in Canada.It's been utilized in the world, but not in Canada," said Breault.

Problems with rail linebefore the washout

Breault says his company was first contactedabout repairing the rail line in 2016, a year before the tracks were washed out. At the time,Omnitrax still owned the rail lineand was dealing with issues caused by permafrostand soft spots under sections of the track.

"Basically, they had to reduce the speed of tracks where they were having problems, so they were as slow as 10 kilometres an hour in sections ... but at least things were still moving," saidBreault. "They were trying to find a solution so that they could continue to haul grain up there and also Via Rail could transport."

Breault says the tracks will need to be upgraded next year so that they can move people and products quickly and efficiently. Right now, his main concern is getting the rail line repaired to the condition it was in before the washout, so thatthe people of Churchill and surrounding communities can get back to normal life.