Interesting...

But the cost of an inital E/W road is significantly less, and more attractive to link northern communities, and thereby more likely to bring Fed money into the project.

Assuming KWG is able to work with Noront's underground infratructure to access Black Horse chromite, and their model is to produce a concentrate at site via gravity seperation (45% of the crude ore mined, as was Cliff's plan) would the costs of tranportation by truck over and E/W route still allow for a positive economic assessment even if the proposed production levels were more modest ?

Leveraging Noronts infrastructure would being money to Noront and speed up development and cash flow for both Noront and KWG. There seems to me to be a number of other benefits that could accrue to this arrangement; easier EAs, slower ramp up of a new natural gas driven chromium plant etc. I could even see KWG taking repsonsibility for the Noront chromite in some form of partnership.

Rail could come later as a greater portion of the world chormite market is realized.

lakeside