Canadian Pacific announced today its main line west of Calgary through the Banff-Canmore region of Alberta is now open after railway operations crews successfully restored segments impacted by the extreme weather last week.  A portion of its track in Calgary is expected to re-open this evening, fully restoring the railway’s main line. A segment of CP’s south line to Lethbridge, Alberta will be fully restored by Thursday.

Heavy rainfall and the accelerated snowcap melt in the Rockies over the past several days caused severe flooding and many Southern Alberta communities remain evacuated and under states of emergency including Calgary.

While the affected segments of the railway’s main line were being fully restored, the railway detoured a number of its trains on the south western part of its network and was assisted by CN and other carriers over the weekend.

“Considering the devastating impacts to thousands of people and property that this extreme weather left in its path, I commend the resiliency and dedicated efforts of all our CP railroaders, who safely worked to get our network back in service so quickly,” said CP Chief Executive Officer, E. Hunter Harrison, who noted during the four-day period, crews responded to over forty individual locations impacted by high water in both Alberta and the British Columbia interior.

“The force and extent of this flooding was extensive and evolved from hour-to-hour. As locations were identified, CP crews responded with equipment and resources and carefully managed to safely and systematically restore each outage,” said Harrison.

Harrison continued, “Despite the significant recovery efforts and interruption to railway operations, CP maintains its previously provided guidance for 2013.”