CAMBRIDGE - Canadian Pacific Railways has missed a deadline to ratify an agreement that would see it move its railway shunting operations out of town next year. 

The deal with Waterloo Region was proposed to avoid the region having to build a $25 million railway bridge over Hespeler Road  just north of the Delta intersection. 

Regional council has approved the deal, which would help CPR avoid paying for its share of the bridge works.

It’s not clear, however, what railway’s inaction means.

“Nothing has happened, aside from everything is on hold for a week,” said Mike LoVecchio, a railway spokesman.

When asked if CPR was backing out the of the deal,  he said “I don’t know” and repeated the process was simply on hold.

Likewise, region chief administrative officer Mike Murray was in the dark when contacted late Friday afternoon.

He’s heard nothing from the railway, yes or no, about signing the deal which had a clause requiring ratification by both parties by the end of October.

Murray was unable to question his staff about any conversations his staff have had with the railway. He would check on the issue Monday, he said.

The railway agreed in principle to move its slow moving shunting operations out of Cambridge, where they routinely jam up traffic daily on Hespeler Road.  Any trains that would be left would move faster on upgraded tracks, so traffic tie-ups would be minimized. That would allow the region to delay -- perhaps cancel -- building the train bridge planned to be constructed in 2009 and 2010.

CPR said it would move shunting operations to a new yard its building west of Ayr, to serve the new Toyota car factory in Woodstock. Most of the Cambridge trains are full of cars  built at the Toyota plant on Fountain Street north.

That move, however, was what Ayr residents feared would happen as they fought for a federal environmental review of the proposal.  Instead, the Conservative goverment imposed some conditions to make it more palatable, and essentially approved what the railway wanted.

The Woodstock yard is supposed to be open by the end of 2009.