The Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway is a private

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

regional railway that stretches through the wilderness of northeastern

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

and western

Labrador Labrador () is a geographic and cultural region within the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the primarily continental portion of the province and constitutes 71% of the province's area but is home to only 6% of its populatio ...

. It connects Labrador City, Labrador, with the port of

Sept-Îles, Quebec Sept-Îles (, , ) is a city in the Côte-Nord region of eastern Quebec. Along with Brador, Quebec, Brador and Blanc-Sablon, Sept-Îles is one of the oldest places in the province. The population was 24,569 as of the 2021 Canadian census. The ...

, on the north shore of the

St. Lawrence River The St. Lawrence River (, ) is a large international river in the middle latitudes of North America connecting the Great Lakes to the North Atlantic Ocean. Its waters flow in a northeasterly direction from Lake Ontario to the Gulf of St. Lawren ...

. QNS&L is owned by Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC), and is a common carrier.

History

When it was built between 1951 and 1954, the QNS&L connected the port of Sept-Îles on the north shore of the

with the northern terminus at IOC's mining community of Schefferville, Quebec, a distance of . In 1958, the Wabush ore body near Labrador City was opened by IOC and the Wabush Mining Company. QNS&L built a line to serve these mines, running west from the Sept-Îles-Schefferville main line at Emeril Junction, Labrador, to Carol Lake, Labrador, near Wabush. Service on this branch began in 1960. At the same time, Wabush Mining Company built the relatively short Wabush Lake Railway from its mines at Labrador City to the QNS&L connection at Wabush. QNS&L hauls its own traffic from Carol Lake to IOC port facilities at Sept-Îles. QNSX also hauls Wabush Lake Railway traffic from the interchange at Wabush to Arnaud Jct., Quebec, near Sept-Îles, where it interchanges to the Arnaud Railway, which then completes the journey around Sept-Îles Harbour to Wabush Mining Co. port facilities at Pointe Noire, Quebec. In the 1980s, the Schefferville mining operations were closed in favour of iron ore deposits located further to the south near Wabush, and most residents relocated to Labrador City. QNS&L maintained subsidized passenger and freight service for local

First Nations First nations are indigenous settlers or bands. First Nations, first nations, or first peoples may also refer to: Indigenous groups *List of Indigenous peoples *First Nations in Canada, Indigenous peoples of Canada who are neither Inuit nor Mé ...

communities along this portion of its system, known as the Menihek Subdivision, until December 1, 2005, when it sold the Emeril Junction-Schefferville rail line to Tshiuetin Rail Transportation (TSH) for the sum of $1 CAD. QNS&L still provides freight services, transporting employee automobiles, various bulk mine materials, large equipment, and everyday supplies for Labrador City and the various maintenance of way camps. This railway, along with the TSH line, Chemin de fer Arnaud (ARND), Wabush Lake Railway (WABL), and Bloom Lake Railway (BLRC), form an isolated railway network, as it does not interchange with any other rail lines on the North American network.

Incidents

Some time after 1997, the QNS&L was permitted by

Transport Canada Transport Canada () is the Ministry (government department), department within the Government of Canada responsible for developing regulations, Policy, policies and Public services, services of road, rail, marine and air Transport in Canada, tra ...

to employ only one engineer on its routes. In 2013 after the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster, Transport Canada issued 12 guideline regulations. Since August 20, 2013 the QNS&L has been the only remaining freight railway in Canada to use Single Person Train Operation (SPTO).The one other Single Person Train Operation freight carrier, Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway, was shut down by Canadian authorities in 2013. On Thursday, November 6, 2014, a freight train consisting of three locomotives and 240 railcars derailed 20 km north of Sept-Îles, because of a landslide over the rail tracks. The locomotives and several railcars ended up in the Moisie River. The engineer of the locomotive died and was found by divers two days later.

More traffic

In 2010, Consolidated Thompson Iron Mines opened the Bloom Lake Mine, just west of Labrador City, Newfoundland. As part of this new operation, Genesee & Wyoming was contracted to operate the Bloom Lake Railway to transport iron ore from the mine to a connection with the Wabush Lake Railway. The Wabush Lake Railway began acting as a middle man, taking the Bloom Lake Railway trains, and transporting them to Wabush Junction for the QNS&L to transport to the Chemin de fer Arnaud just as they would Wabush trains. The Arnaud then takes the trains to the Consolidated Thompson's dock at Pointe-Noire, Quebec.

In popular culture

The construction of the QNSX forms the backdrop for English author

Hammond Innes Ralph Hammond Innes (15 July 1913 – 10 June 1998) was a British novelist who wrote over 30 novels, as well as works for children and travel books. Biography Innes was born in Horsham, Sussex, and educated at Feltonfleet School, Cobham, Surrey ...

' 1958 adventure novel about Labrador, '' The Land God Gave to Cain''. Innes spent a period of time with the crews building the railway during his research. On his 1960 album, ''Canada's Story in Song'', Alan Mills featured a song called "Iron Ore by 'Fifty-Four", in which he sang of the story of the construction of the railroad. In the early 1970s, a country-Western band from Newfoundland called the Newfoundland Showband recorded a song about the railway, sung to the tune of " Wabash Cannonball".

Locomotive roster

QNSL rosters seven types of locomotives. Most of these engines have been rebuilt at some point in their lives. QNS&L uses the SD40-3s mainly on mixed freight and work trains. The newer C44-9Ws, AC4400CWs, and SD70ACes handle the unit iron ore trains.

Notes

References

External links

QNS&L official website
*

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

file * PDF file
Rail Lines of Northern Québec

Rail Lines of Labrador

"The Iron Road To Labrador."
''Popular Mechanics'', February 1954, pp. 118–124. *http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/modelListRR.aspx?id=QNSL {{Canadianmetros Newfoundland and Labrador railways Quebec railways Transport in Sept-Îles, Quebec Companies based in Quebec Standard-gauge railways in Canada