150 Years of Railways in Perth County
The earliest years of settlement in Perth County developed outward from
two colonization roads, the Huron Road (1828) in the south of the county
and the Wawanosh Road (1847) in the north of the county, both running
east to west. In these early years, well into the 1850s, the road system
in the county was very poor. The arrival of the first railways in 1856
brought about a revolutionary change in communications with the outside
world that had a very positive effect on the agricultural and industrial
economy of the county for many years to come.
Railway Rivalry
Because of the very poor roads, it was not surprising
that already in 1849, people in the county were getting excited
about various
proposals for building railways into the area. The better
settled south end of
the county was soon blessed, not with one, but with two railways
vying to be first. And in 1856, both railways arrived at
Stratford!
The
first in the race was the Buffalo, Brantford and Goderich
Railway Company, formed in 1852, which soon had surveyed its route and
laid
quite a bit of track, including at Stratford. However, the
company ran into
financial difficulties and bankruptcy which delayed its project.
A new company, Buffalo and Lake Huron Railway Company, was
then formed to take
over the line and finish building the railway.
In the meantime, the original plan (1849) of the Toronto
and Guelph Railway Company to build directly to Goderich from Guelph
was changed.
In 1853, the company merged into the Grand Trunk Railway
which was ultimately to run from Quebec City to Chicago. The route
to Goderich
was changed
to Sarnia via Stratford and work began very soon thereafter.
Arriving
in Stratford to lay its track just at the time that the BB&GR had
gone into bankruptcy, the GTR ripped up the track that was in its way
and proceeded to lay down its own track. Normally, the
second railway to arrive would be responsible to put in the proper
railway crossings. So when the B&LHR was created, the GTR was forced
to go back and create the proper crossing.
On September 3, 1856, the GTR
brought in the first test train into Stratford. The real
opening of the line was October 8, 1856 with a small
ceremony for the dignitaries who had come in from Toronto.
The first train on the Buffalo line arrived a few weeks later on December
6,
1856, again with little fanfare. The uncertainty of which
railway would arrive
first, and the competition between the residents who favoured
one or the other, meant that no grand party had been planned. New stations
were
also opened at Shakespeare and at Tavistock, which led very
quickly
to the growth of these villages.
Railway Expansion
The Grand Trunk extended the railway to St. Marys
in 1857, with a branch line to London in 1858, and finished
the main line from St.
Marys Junction to Sarnia by 1860. New stations were built
at St. Marys Junction
and at St. Marys and eventually at St. Pauls.
The Buffalo and Lake
Huron extended their railway to Mitchell in 1857 and finished
the line to Goderich in 1858, although its work
was a bit shoddy which led to subsequent problems on the
line. New stations developed at Sebringville, Mitchell and Dublin. Besides
the
problems
with the track, Goderich did not develop into the important
port that
was anticipated because the harbour was not deep enough,
and financial difficulties plagued the company until the Grand Trunk
took over
the operation of the Buffalo line in 1863.
The first plan to build a railway
to the north end of the county
was begun in 1855 as the Stratford and Lake Huron Railway
Co. However, the plans laid dormant for two decades until a new line
from the
south, the Port Dover and Lake Huron Railway opened its line
to Stratford in
1875 with a station on Falstaff and Nile Streets. The Port
Dover railway revived the Stratford and Lake Huron proposal and by 1877
had reached
Listowel and Palmerston. The two companies merged and shortly
after,
in 1881, were taken over by the Grand Trunk Railway.
In the meantime,
the north of the county had benefited from another railway plan – the
Wellington, Grey and Bruce Railway. The main line only crossed the
very tip of the county as it came into the
new town of Palmerston in 1873. However, various local municipalities
convinced
the company to build a southern branch through Listowel and Atwood
to Kincardine which proved a boon to the development of that area.
This company was associated with the Great Western Railway Company
in Hamilton,
the great rival of the Grand Trunk Railway. Difficult times for the
GWR however gave the GTR an opportunity to purchase its arch-rival,
including
the WG&BR, in 1882. In 1923, the GTR became one of the main components
of the Canadian National Railways (CNR), the new government-owned
trans-Canada railway company.
With the absorption of the various lines
connecting to all parts
of Ontario, Stratford was chosen in 1870 as the location for the
GTR (later CNR) locomotive repair shops with about 300 families moving
into
the town in the next year. The shops were enlarged in 1889 when the
GWR shops in Hamilton were closed down, and further enlargement happened
in 1907 and 1949. In the meantime, the GTR also took over the WG&BR
shops in Palmerston in 1882. Stratford and Palmerston were also for
many decades divisional centres in the GTR/CNR system.
Beside the immediate
railway-related industry of the shops, the railways
made possible the easy shipment of goods produced in local
towns or on the rich farms of the county to markets all over North America
and even
overseas. The furniture industry was the largest to result
from this
railway access, especially in Stratford, Listowel and Milverton.
The ten or more furniture factories in Stratford in the 1920s
produced about
one-sixth of all the furniture in Canada, the most of any
place in the country. Perth County was also one of the leading areas
in the
country for the dairy industry (especially cheese and butter)
for well over
a
century.
Canadian Pacific Railway
For twenty years after 1882, the Grand Trunk
Railway had a monopoly in railway service in the county. Then, in
1902,
the Canadian Pacific Railway, through a number of subsidiary companies,
tried to break the GTR’s hold. The first line was the Guelph and
Goderich Railway which was completed in 1907. It cut across the centre
of the county from east to west (Millbank-Milverton-Monkton), in
an area between the GTR’s lines in the north and the south of the
county. A branch line from Linwood to Listowel was built at the same
time.
The other CPR affiliate was the St. Marys and Western Ontario Railway
which was a short railway running east from St. Marys (Lind
station) to the CPR line into Woodstock and opened in 1908.
The original plan was to connect these with a crucial link
through Stratford, something which the CPR subsidiary Tillsonburg,
Lake Erie
and Pacific Railway Company proposed in three plans to the
City of Stratford between 1904 and 1913. All of the plans had the rail
line along
the Avon
River, through the much-cherished parkland. Finally, after
much opposition, the CPR plan was defeated in a public referendum in
Stratford.
The
CPR gave up the struggle to connect the Perth County parts of its
network to the detriment of its existing lines. The Listowel branch
was closed in 1939, although it wasn’t torn up until the 1980s,
when the other two lines were also discontinued. There was simply
not enough business to continue the operation of these lines without
a connection
through Stratford.
Decline of the Railway
The growing popularity of the automobile and
the improved highway network in the province caused the slow
decline in the number of
rail passengers. In 1970 CNR and CPR cancelled all passenger
service except
on selected main lines. In order to operate these remaining
passenger services, the Canadian government created a new corporation,
VIA
Rail Canada. St. Marys and Stratford are fortunate to still
have passenger service today.
A similar trend in freight traffic, especially with
the introduction
of larger trucks and a new policy of just-in-time production for
most products, led to the closure and removal of most railway lines
in the
county by the early 1990s. Today, only the first two that were built – the
Grand Trunk mainline through Stratford and St. Marys, and the Stratford-Goderich
line are still in existence. A new company, Goderich and Exeter Railway
Company, owns and operates these lines after purchasing them from
the CNR.
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