Canadian National Railway has offered an update on the status of grain shipping.

CN representative Greg Hamilton was one of the presenters at the University of Manitoba's fields on wheels conference 
 
"Weather really had the impact of slowing things up in the beginning. For the first seven weeks things were not moving to the rate that we expected with the size of the crop that was anticipated," he said.

"More recently there was some considerable storm action in Vancouver itself, so having an impact on the ability to off-load and slowing the supply chain from that destination."

Into this context, Hamilton said CN is well prepared to meet the challenge of the crop year.

He notes all of the cars have been deployed, adding CN repaired about 700 government hopper cars during the summer months.

Locomotives are available and crew members have also been called back to work.

The company expects to be supplying about four-thousand grain cars per week during the winter months.