Belledune Gypsum

As I mentioned a while ago, synthetic gypsum is being shipped by rail from Belledune to Saint John. I had the opportunity early this month to see the cars on site at Belledune. There were two blocks of seven cars on the one siding in the plant.


Here's a closeup of one of the cars, with the gypsum pile a pile of limestone behind it. The limestone is used in the scrubbing process to remove the contaminants from the power plant's exhaust.


Most of the cars were the same CN 198xxx series used to ship the raw gypsum from Nova Scotia to McAdam, but a few are gondolas.

Train 587 of the New Brunswick East Coast Railway takes the gypsum cars to Bathurst, where they get on NBEC train 402 to Moncton. There, CN takes them to Saint John on train 406, and finally NB Southern Railway delivers the cars to a location behind Irving Paper where they are unloaded.