The Pembina refinery near Redwater, Alberta is a major liquefied gas production (LGP) plant. The Redwater South Rail Yard Expansion (RSRYE) project was launched for a number of reasons, including increased gas production resulting from the construction of new plants, additional production of diesel products (NWU), changes to government regulations and the need to bring CN’s rail operations criteria up to standard.
Briefly, the project involved expanding the site to accommodate more than 260 railcars per day handling five different products in three loading areas. In order to accomplish this, civil engineering and drainage works were required to add retention ponds and water entrapment systems, modify existing roads, construct seventy-five new level crossings, carry out electrical work for lighting the site and the rail lines and add a locomotive engine heating system. One high-voltage transmission line had to be relocated, and a number of large- and medium-diameter pipelines had to be buried.
Rail works
- Addition of a railcar scale
- Addition of six new tracks with a capacity of more than 100 railcars each
- Expansion of the existing loop with twelve separate tracks
- Addition of loading sites
- Connection to existing tracks to allow for interconnection of the site
- Expansion of existing tracks in the marshalling yard into eight separate tracks and one additional track for maintenance
- Relocation of existing CN tracks
Project challenges
- Accelerated design
- Incorporation of new tracks
- Complexity of the operations required to incorporate the new tracks
- Optimization of the production rail operations
- Integration with CN’s rail operations
- Optimization of construction with no production slowdowns