I am with Auminer regarding his answer to you Funkey and want to add the following:

Railway would serve Noront as much as any other company of the Ring. Rail means cheaper transport of ore or byproducts. It serves just as well in the other direction Sooo Noront is in no way against rail.
But to Noront it is more logical and practical to have the road first ( it is not nothing) and imho without the road the natives will not be on side without whom nothing will happen. No road is not the only solution, no one has said that in the past. It is a start ( Yes no rail without road is my interpretation of natives).
The road is enough to give true value to Eagle's Nest. It is potentially that profitable, rail just means more profit potential.
Coutts is not passive, it is just that Noront has done everything that is needed and is in waiting mode for bureaucrats etc. Smeenk on the other hand is at least a couple of years behind Noront so it appears that they are moving ahead. However sp of both shows the true situation regarding development and times to a ready project.

And about any chinese company, if they try to do anything the 'fast way' they will find very quickly what Cliffs did. Cliffs did not leave just because of iron prices. They could not find a method to cooperate with KWG and, I think, with natives in particular.

As to Alan and Frank I think cooperation is still in the works because I do not see anything that has changed from a few years ago, namely rail and underground works access. Noront holds Some KWG stock and if fortunes were reversed I suspect KWG would have held some Noront. That to me is not counter cooperation but the opposite.

Cheers to a cooperative future, Ed.