Townsend Lumber delivers its first outbound rail shipment

It only took seven minutes for GIO Rail’s No. 1597 engine to arrive at Townsend Lumber on May 9, attach a rail car loaded with 204,000 pounds of rail ties, then depart on its way back to St. Thomas.

It was a historic day for the company, most of the seven minutes were spent taking photos with Townsend Lumber staff.

“This is Townsend Lumber’s first outbound shipment of rail, ever,” said Mike Penner, co-owner of Townsend Lumber with his wife Laura Townsend.

After its one hour and 25-minute ride to St. Thomas, the shipment of ties transferred to CN Railway for the remainder of its approximately 700-km trip to Stella-Jones Inc.’s treating plant in Delson, Quebec, near Montreal.

“I’m trying to support GIO Rail on this short line,” said Penner. “I’ve made a commitment with GIO that as long as I can ship out for the same price, I’ll use the rail when I can.”

In the world of rail, a shipment to the Montreal area is a relatively short one, he said, which means there wasn’t huge cost savings for their first outbound shipment.

“But it’s giving business back to GIO Rail and supporting them. It’s about trying to support other local businesses.”

It also reduces their carbon footprint – one rail car can replace three transport trucks.

Townsend Lumber, located on Jackson Sideroad at Hwy 3, six kilometers east of Tillsonburg, has been using the 48-km GIO Rail short line, which runs from St. Thomas to Courtland, for inbound shipments since the Cayuga Subdivision re-opened in January 2022. They received three rail shipments the first year.

“Inbound, we expect 12-15 carloads coming in this year from the west coast for our Douglas fir program.”

Future outbound loads will depend on customer demand, he said.

“This one was just the icebreaker – set up our CN account, figure out the process, what we have to do for rail and how it works, and then we’re hoping to build on that once we get comfortable.”

Within Elgin, Norfolk, and Oxford counties, there are more than 1,000 acres of industrial zoned property along the rail line and the reinstated industrial rail service wants to provide opportunity for new businesses seeking access to rail.

The GIO Rail initiative began in November 2020 when GIO Rail, led by president Gerry Gionet, the Town of Tillsonburg, and SCOR EDC entered into a letter of intent to develop a business case for re-instating operations along the Cayuga Rail subdivision.

“We saw it as an area in Southwestern Ontario that we believe has a lot of potential for economic growth,” said Gionet in January 2022. “We are a ‘if you build it, they will come’ type of company. We are willing to take a risk to see rail grow.”

A target was set for rail cars in 2022, and that target was met, or just under, said Cephas Panschow, development commissioner, Town of Tillsonburg.

“That’s good news,” said Panschow. “We still have an aggressive ramp-up target for the next four years. By year five we want to see up to five times the volume of cars annually on the line.”

As southwestern Ontario’s largest sawmill and kiln drying operation, Townsend Lumber draws its lumber from the Lambton, Chatham-Kent and Middlesex areas and the Niagara region. Their mill in Kitchener draws from areas to the north including Orangeville and Durham.

The third-generation company was started in 1959 by tobacco farmers Robert Townsend and Bert Abbott. It moved to several locations before settling in at Glen Meyer in Norfolk County. Their sons, Dave Townsend and Murray Abbott, bought the business in the 1970s, and after a fire in 1984, moved it to its current location.

Penner and his wife Laura Townsend bought the company in 2016, forming Townsend Penner Group, which owns Townsend Lumber, Breeze Dried Inc., BreezeWood Floors, and Kitchener Forest Products.

“We’ve expanded our value-added operations and services,” said Penner. “Instead of just selling the rough timber, we can custom cut the timber, custom dry it, and we can dress it on the planer ready for installation. So instead of buying the timber and taking it somewhere to get it dried, then trucking it somewhere else to get it planed, they can order it one-stop shop. All of those value-added processes can all be done at this facility, and loaded up ready to go.”

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