Old Joe, interesting discussion! There are 2 points I would like discuss here.

- I would expect to see both road and RR on the CCC corridor. The road would server initially a service road (as indicated by B-Jay in a follow-on post) to bring stuff north to build the RR and other infrastructures, and later as a public road for passenger cars, ervice vehecles, and a few trucks back and forth to bring consumers goods to the north and other things to the south. Others things would not include ores in convoys of monster trucks since that would destroy the road and create safety hazards to the passengers in much smaller cars (keeping in mind "the right of weight" in a collision with a monster truck...monster truck would prevail). Initially, construction and heavy equipment would be running along the service road to dump and grade the gravel and to compact the base of the road, before they put on the asphal (no road builder expert here, but this is sort of common sense). A multi-purpose road and RR combination is a no-brainer.

- The Fed and the unions: The RR proposal by the Northland employee union would be music to the ear for the Fed. One potential obstactable off the negotiation table. Participation of the union is a good thing, e.g. Bruce Power workers WestJet? The Fed has been shown to adapt to current situations quite well. Previously, there seemed to be no attention paid to China and the South East Asian nations. Some critics would pass a verdict that the Fed did not wanting to deal with non-European and North American nations. But, look at Canada trade relationship with China and South East Asian nations during the last few months. From what has been shown during the last few years the Feb is pro business, not neccessarily pro big companies, e.g. CLF, but primarily pro business development to benefit Canada. The Northland employee proposal is one of the key piece in the development of the RoF. Let start the infrastuctures, "you build and they will come". There is quite a few political brownie points as well as far as the optics with respect to business development of the North to help isolated communities and the folks in those FN communities. IMO, Harper will jump in with 2 feet (and the Prov. as well since election is just around the corner...3-4 months?)

- Frank of KWG: He's a pro and seems to know how to put the puzzle together. He already shook hands with the PM some months ago in Toronto (check KWG/Photo Gallery, http://www.kwgresources.com/photo_gallery/, the last time I looked it was the very first picture in the collection, next picture is the aerial photo of Esker staked for the RR, theis looks wide enough for both road and RR and other stuff)...Frank just walked over to the PM introduced himself and gave the PM an impromptu briefing on RoF, and the RR of course. This was taken place during lunch hour at a convenient restaurant just downstair of the Fed liaison office with the Ontario). According to some report Frank has been spending quite a fair bit of time in Ottawa...must be the fine weather of the Capital City?

goldhunter