Of all the routes, you can bet your bottom dollar that the N-S for road is dead and burried. And any road for chromite is also a dead issue due to operational costs.
So for road it looks like by default E-W is the one that will come to be.

Further, what remains to be debated about is slurry pipe and railway.
Pipe may be cheepest but it is a one hit wonder for one user while a railway is multimodal in users and cargo.
Rail has to go in sooner or later, it is inescapable, even if Noront or KWG were to build a pipe.
I am still thinking that N-S is the one most likely to be used for rail. This is due to with time sore heads will wise up and make it possible. If not then possible railway to James Bay also has some native backing.
It is not just Noront buying Cliffs's chromite that has Aroland etc. fuming. There is competition from James Bay and it has the N-S route natives nervous.

Greasemonkies, who said that chromite is going by pipe? Not Frank, pipe is an option at this time, no decision to be made for a long while.

Yes I also think that Noront and KWG are most likely to merge instead one assimilate the other but we may have to wait for quite a while. Too soon to speculate on that. If no Biggie will take out one or the other before that.

I think the James Bay route is the one that will end up as a path for electrical power to be delivered to the Ring.

As for Franco Nevada, they can smell the possibility in the wind that Noront could become a big company with an sp to boot that is why they are in ( I think they have more staying power than RCF).

Ed.