CN's Winter Plan sets out a wide range of initiatives to ensure CN has the capacity and resources to meet customer needs.

CEO Tracy Robinson has been focusing the CN team on servicing customer needs by getting back to basics.

The 2022-23 Winter Plan released last week is built on four cornerstones: operating safely, delivering the best possible service, increasing network productivity and improving resiliency.

Some of new initiatives outlined in the Winter Plan to help improve delivery include:

- an increase in CN’s inventory of high and mid-horsepower locomotives to approximately 1,950 locomotives, with the addition of 57 high-horsepower locomotives.

- 800 new boxcars to be delivered in early 2023, and the delivery of 500 high-efficiency hopper cars during the 2022-23 crop year.

CN has also implemented scheduled slots for bulk unit trains in key corridors to increase rail capacity and velocity.

You can view CN's 2022-23 Winter Plan - Meeting the Challenge here.

CN has seen some key challenges over the last few weeks.

A bridge fire in northwestern Alberta has temporarily shut down CN rail traffic in and out of the Grande Prairie area.

This following a major outage on the CN's mainline to the Port of Vancouver after a large sinkhole was discovered in southern B.C. at CN's Yale subdivision in September.

CN's Western Canadian Grain Report shows the event continues to have an impact on the overall supply chain as it directly affects the supply of empty hopper cars returning to the Prairies in a timely manner, especially during the peak demand period of the crop year.