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CN plans to spend $12 million to expand its Locomotive Reliability Centre (LRC) in Prince George, British Columbia.

The project calls for increasing the shop’s floor space 50 percent to about 50,000 square feet to add four repair bays with pits. The larger LRC will enable the railroad to handle a forecasted increase in locomotive inspections and repairs, CN officials said in a prepared statement. The shop is strategically located midway between Edmonton, Alberta, and Prince Rupert, B.C., which are about 1,000 miles apart, they said.

“The facility serviced locomotives for more than 9,000 CN trains that transited the city last year,” said Keith Creel, CN’s executive vice president and chief operating officer. “We are at maximum capacity at the LRC, with three shifts per day, seven days a week, and we need to expand it to handle existing and forecasted growth of intermodal, coal and other traffic in northern B.C."

CN also plans to spend more than $4 million this year to extend two key sidings north of Prince George on a line toward Chetwynd to accommodate 10,000-foot coal trains serving northeastern B.C. mines. From 2004 through 2012, the Class I will have spent more than $150 million on longer sidings along the Edmonton-Prince Rupert corridor, CN officials said.