But Coutts is skeptical whether rail will be needed anytime soon, saying it depends on the eventual scale of the mining operations and the tonnages hauled out.

“In order to make a railway really viable and necessary, you need to be moving somewhere in the order of 8-10 million tonnes (of chromite) per annum.

The market just won’t support that at this point in time, even with a large-scale project,” Coutts said, mentioning that Cliffs Natural Resources only proposed moving 3-4 million tonnes at one time.

Noront is only talking about mining 500,000 tonnes of chromite from its Blackbird project before opening the lids on its larger deposits.

According to its project sequence, Noront’s Eagle’s Nest nickel-copper project would be their first mine developed over the next five years, followed by Blackbird.

The mine concentrate would be trucked to a railhead in northwestern Ontario and sent away for processing. Sudbury will get the nickel from Eagle’s Nest while the Blackbird chromite will be processed at a yet-to-be-named ferrochrome furnace site.