SEPT-ÎLES, Quebec — The Quebec North Shore & Labrador Railway has reopened after a week-long shutdown because of a derailment near the town of Sept-Îles, parent company Iron Ore Co. of Canada has announced.
In a Facebook post, Iron Ore Co. said the line reopened at midnight this morning (Jan. 5) with traffic initially operating at reduced speed. The company says more 700 worker-hours of repairs had taken place without incident, and that it had taken a “stringent preventative approach” to the repairs to minimize environmental risks and ensure safe operations in the future.
Tshiuetin Rail Transportation, which operates passenger service on the QNS&L, said in its own Facebook post that its operations will resume on Wednesday, Jan. 7, with a train from Sept-Îles to Schefferville, Que. A return trip will depart Schefferville the following day. Tshiuetin also released the passenger schedule for the remainer of the month.
Tshiuetin had chartered planes to help offset the loss of passenger service to the line’s remote communities during the shutdown, and arranged freight service between Schefferville and Labrador City, Labrador, to assure delivery of essential goods. Its general manager, James Berube, had said that the derailment of a 244-car train had led to the service outage [see “Derailment to shut down …,” Trains.com, Dec. 30, 2025].
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