The dream of having a London & Port Stanley railway corridor hasn’t been dashed.

“It’s still in the works,” said city manager Wendell Graves.

The goal is to connect the L&PS line back to the CN rail line north of Kains Street and create trails and parkland along the route.

“Ultimately, it connects to the national railway system,” Graves said.

The reconnected lines would open up tourist trains that could operate between Port Stanley, St. Thomas and London.

The drawings have been submitted to CN railway and the city is just waiting for the company’s feedback and approval, Graves said.

The original timeline to have the work completed was the end of March 2018 so the city is still working within its original goal.

The project involves a final connection from where the rail line ends near the L&PS station downtown up to the main line of CN.

“It’s not a very long piece,” Graves said.

Graves said the city has been waiting for a while to hear back from CN about the drawings.

“That’s kind of the hiccup right now,” Graves said.

When final approval does come in Graves said the building of the additional tracks is not a long process.

“The deadline was predicated on that we’d receive some Canada 150 funding for it and those had to be spent by the end of March,” Graves said.

The city received almost $170,000 from the federal government to move the plan along with the estimated $600,000 build.

The L&PS railway was built in the mid-1800s. Its main function was shipping coal and carrying tourists to and from the lakeshore.

The reconnection has been a topic of discussion at city hall for about the last seven years.

With files from Jennifer Bieman, Postmedia News