Ontario Northland bought a petite fleet of National Steel Car covered hopper cars to transport agricultural products from Northern Ontario to market. The four covered hoppers were purchased as carload shipments from agriculture customers in Earlton, New Liskeard and the Englehart clay-belt region continued to grow. Historically, trucking has been used to haul agrifood products to southern Ontario destinations. But the longer the haul distance, the more sense rail makes.
The Rail Services division is Ontario Northland’s primary revenue-generator. The division's purchase of the single-digit fleet of new cars in December, 2022 allowed Ontario Northland to meet growing agricultural demands in the northeast region. Beginning in 2021, Ontario Northland began shipping four cars of oats per week (approximately 200 annually) from an area farm. The 200 railcars of oats removed approximately 400 truck trips annually, resulting in fewer greenhouse-gas emissions and less wear-and-tear on area roads.
Koch Farms in Earlton is one such agrifood business. Investing in a loading dock and auger, making an agricultural transload facility to enable shipments by rail, the farm wanted to enhance capacity and access to rail enabled the handling of greater product loads. The farm was also approaching the renewal of its 10-truck fleet, which was being used to haul product to Ontario, Québec, and Iowa markets.
The switch to rail saved the farm money. Shipping by rail saves the farm $1,000 per rail car, or $200,000 per year. Furthermore, the farm was able to avoid expenditures on the renewal of its truck fleet. Prior to contracting with Ontario Northland, the farm was running 10 truck roundtrips per week and was going to replace the truck fleet with three tractor trailer sets . In shifting modes to rail, the farm was able to avoid the purchase of the three tractor trailer sets.
Due to the success of shipping by rail, the farm is assessing the potential of building a 1,000-foot spur to connect their property to the transload on Ontario Northland. The line would enable streamlined operations as product would be able to go straight into a covered hopper car, removing the need to store product in silos. The spur would also facilitate an increase in potential rail shipments, helping the farm attract other farmers to ship their product by rail. The farm has committed to shipping all oats and canola in the 2022 season by rail, increasing the number of cars annually from 200 to 400.
The Ontario Northland petite covered hopper fleet is occasionally seen here along the CN Kingston Sub. Though I've not been fortunate to photograph one of these moves myself, I have seen them on the Belleville Railstream webcam. Almost always together in one cut.
ONT 6001-6000-6003: three of four new grain covered hoppers on CN No 372 - Feb. 25, 2023:
ONT 6003-6000 - half of the fleet - on CN No 372 with soybeans to Becancour - March 31, 2023
This photo of the four cars on Ontario Northland train 214 on October 25, 2024 was posted to social media (below). Presumably, the cars stay together and return to Ontario Northland rails often enough that the graffiti was removed at North Bay shops?
Link:
- drizzly video of the four cars at Hamilton in May, 2023
Running extra...
And the wiener is...a fox raiding a barbecue in BC. "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is a famous English-language pangram—a sentence containing every letter of the alphabet. To be frank, this fox jumped furter - getting away with about six hot dogs, according to Crowsnest Pass RCMP:
First past the [999th!] post - Expanded...It's been a very positive week!
- At the KHSC 2026 Nursing Awards, our daughter received the Specialty Award for Nursing Leadership. Our granddaughter is getting ready to visit school for the first time!
- Our son is on the verge of the launch of free texting via MeshCore throughout the city with Our Livable Solutions:
- Our son-in-law is assisting providing installation skills for MeshCore repeaters, sometimes with a nearby raccoon:
- My wife is winning her second set of monthly rewards from the Government of Canada during her big month: Mother's Day, Wedding Anniversary, Special Birthday!
- Our daughter-in-law led a very enjoyable Spring Arts showcase at Kings Town School in which our grandsons participated.
- I was fortunate to have a profile published in Profile Kingston magazine.
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