Sunday, June 24, 2007

Prince George prepares for the intermodal explosion


With CN Rail currently upgrading its tracks, bridges and tunnels between Prince George and Prince Rupert, thing seem to be picking up in Prince George as far as full time job expectations that will come from the Fairview Container port.

The creation of an inland container terminal in Prince George means that CN is looking for 60 new employees for the downtown Prince George terminal, with a hiring fair planned for Prince George on July 9th.

The investment in the Prince George facility is estimated to be cost 20 million dollars and will help to give that city a footprint into the container traffic travelling across the north.

CN Rail to hold job fair for intermodal terminal
Thursday, 21 June 2007, 14:25 PST
By MARK NIELSEN
Prince George Citizen staff


Progress on CN Rail's new transload operation and intermodal rail terminal has reached the point where the company is about to launch a search for people to operate the $20-million facility.

The company will hold a job fair on July 9 at the Civic Centre, noon to 8 p.m.

Slated to be completed by October in the company's First Avenue yard, will be able to handle 60 to 70 containers a day and will employ 60 people full-time.

"We're going to have our people here actively pursuing mechanical people, transportation people, engineering people, we are looking for people from all crafts and we'd certainly like to see a big turn out," said Tom Bourgonje, the company's mountain division general manager Thursday afternoon at the First Avenue yard while giving the media an update on the project.

Much of the work so far has centred on transforming the large, green locomotive building into an 84,000-square-foot warehouse and container stuffing facility. The building's interior has been completely stripped and now work has begun on installing the equipment required to move containers from trucks and store them in the building for transfer onto the trains.

A contract will also soon be awarded to construct two 2,400-foot "pad" tracks on the south side of the building where containers will transferred to and from the two trains that will pass through Prince George each day.

There is also room at the site to extend the two tracks to meet growing demand once the container terminal in Prince Rupert advances to the second phase.

"We can probably go two or three times longer in terms of standing those particular pad tracks, we've ultimately got the whole length of this yard," Bourgonje said.

Once the $180-million first phase is completed this fall, the Port of Prince Rupert will have the capacity to handle 400,000 20-foot-equivalent containers a year. A second phase, which would raise the total bill to $500 million, would increase the capacity to 1.2 million containers.

Along the line between Prince George and Prince Rupert, CN is extending eight sidings and increasing the clearances on nine tunnels and two bridges to accommodated the 12,000-foot double-stacked trains. An overpass in Smithers is also being considered and CN has purchased 50 new locomotives in preparation for completion of the container terminal.

Mayor Colin Kinsley said it's the start of much larger things to come.

"This is the first stage, having a transload and intermodal building here in Prince George, that's going to lead to Prince George being a transportation and distribution hub in North America," he said.
"It might take a decade, I don't know, but with what the airport's doing, what CN's doing, what Prince Rupert is doing...it's just a matter of time."

Initiatives Prince George director Clint Dahl echoed Kinsley's comments.

"It presents unlimited opportunities for us, so it's very exciting," he said.

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