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Canadian Pacific Railway plans to spend the next four days moving its second-heaviest load ever — a 1.2-million-pound reactor — across the railroad's northern tier route from Edmonton, Alberta, to Regina, Saskatchewan.
Consumers' Cooperative Refineries Ltd. plans to use the reactor for its $250 million oil refinery expansion in Regina, which will increase crude-oil processing from 55,000 barrels per day to more than 80,000.
To move the reactor, CPR linked two 12-axle rail cars, creating a single, articulated flat car designed to distribute the reactor's weight and length. The load is 125 feet long (including bracing), 20 feet high and 15 feet wide, overhanging the car's sides.
Because of the reactor's size and weight, CPR checked the entire 550-mile route for any potential problems, including overhead wires, track-side poles, and bridges' weight tolerances and clearances.
The shipment April 17 left CPR's south Edmonton yard traveling at a maximum speed of 20 mph, slowing to less than 10 mph over bridges. The reactor will pass through about 60 towns and cities along the route.
CPR in 1987 moved several reactors weighing more than 1.6 million pounds (its heaviest load) in five separate shipments from Duluth, Minn., to the same Consumers' Cooperative refinery, which the company was expanding then, as well.