IOCC History - 1947 to 1959

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Now that the Iron Ore Company of Canada was incorporated and officers elected, the next big step was to raise the projected $300 million to complete the Knob Lake project; $160 million of which was budgeted for the railway and associated facilities. In addition to the partner's investments, there were also 19 American and Canadian Insurance Companies that lent $145,000,000 to this project. Even by today's standards this was a huge investment, even more so when you realize the earliest possible return on the investment would be 1954. The budget for this mammoth project included:

• Preparing the mine site for production.
• A processing plant for upgrading the crude ore.
• Facilities for loading the ore cars.
• Heavy equipment maintenance buildings.
• Two hydro-electric facilities to supply power to Sept-Iles and Schefferville.
• Two new towns for permanent employees.
• A 350 mile railway linking Schefferville to the docks in Sept-Iles.
• Docking and loading facilities capable of handling annual ore production.

To help achieve this goal, HUT (Hollinger Ungava Transport), made 24,077 trips, flew 55,204 hours and carried a total cargo of nearly 200 million tons from 1948 to the end of 1954. This constituted the largest single civilian airlift recorded to that time. Up until 1990, this record still stood (and may in fact still stand today). Some of the material transported included:

• Earth moving equipment which was dismantled and reassembled at destination.
• Dump trucks which were filled with material such as plywood or tools and then loaded on the plane.
• Daily requirements for the 6,900 field workers averaged at seven pounds of supplies daily; these included food, tobacco and toilet paper.
• Daily requirements of fuel for the heavy equipment averaged over 18,000 gallons.

As predicted in 1949, the project was completed on time in 1954. This was done without the aid of a penny of government financing or subsidies. On the day marking the official completion of the QNS&L Railway, the temperature was -56°F.; but when it was time to drive the golden spike it had warmed to a balmy -20°F.