N.S. spending $7.4M on tunnel and overpass in hopes rail line will be used again

Rail tracks still run between the Nova Scotia communities of Windsor and Hantsport, but it's been nearly a decade since any train carrying gypsum from a local mine has passed over them.

Despite that, the Nova Scotia government is spending $7.4 million on a new train tunnel and a rail overpass as part of the Highway 101 twinning project.

A 98-metre-long, $4.3-million rail tunnel under Highway 101 in Windsor will be finished in a couple of weeks. It means the rail tracks below the highway will remain in place, even though there are no trains using them.

This spring, construction was completed on a rail overpass in nearby Falmouth for the new eastbound lanes of Highway 101. The cost of the concrete bridge with steel box girders and retaining walls was $3.17 million.

"While the rail line is not active at the moment, it is still considered a viable line and has potential to be used in the future," Nova Scotia department of transportation spokesperson Megan Tonet said in an email to CBC.

Tonet said the Nova Scotia government abides by federal regulations with respect to rail lines, which are regulated by Transport Canada and the Canadian Transportation Agency.

The tracks are owned by the Windsor and Hantsport Railway Company. The company's owner, Virginia businessman Bob Schmidt, said in an interview he hopes the rail line will once again move gypsum from the Fundy Gypsum mine near Windsor to the port in Hantsport.

He said he's had conversations with USG, the American company that owns the Fundy Gypsum plant and closed it in 2011, but there's no deal yet in place.

"We've held onto the railway for the last 10 years in a care and maintenance mode with the full expectation and hope that the demand for gypsum would come back to the point that we'd be shipping it by rail to the port," he said.

The Highway 101 project involves twinning a 9.5-kilometre stretch around Windsor and is costing $390 million.

The rail line was last used in order to move gypsum from two quarries just outside Windsor to Hantsport, where it was loaded onto boats and sent to wallboard manufacturing plants in the U.S. USG cited a downturn in the U.S. housing market when it closed the mine.

But there are still lots of gypsum deposits in the ground.

"The claim is there's at least 50 more years of gypsum supply in the ground there," said Hants West MLA Chuck Porter. "So one day, that could come back."

A few employees remain at the Fundy Gypsum plant, located just off Wentworth Road on the outskirts of Windsor.

The tracks to Hantsport are overgrown with brush, but Schmidt said that can likely be remedied with three to six months of work at a cost of maybe $100,000 to $200,000.

"There's some brush clearing that obviously needs to be done, a few pieces of new track that will be needed to be laid down, but nothing that scares us," he said.

Gypsum mining in Hants County has a long history dating back to the early 1800s. At its peak, the gypsum industry would have employed hundreds of people in the Windsor and Hantsport areas.