After the railroad day at the museum I got interested in understanding how two different railways arrived on opposite sides of the bay in Owen Sound, and two different train stations were built on opposite sides of the bay, so I started reading. There were so many arguments about rail lines and bonuses and amalgamations in the late 19th century it's hard to keep track of things!
And it's hard to capture in words the fervent belief in the idea of 'progress' that ran through the communities of southern Ontario in the second half of the 19th century. Politicians and businessmen alike were expecting growth and prosperity, if only the railway was built! Two and three-story buildings were built on main streets, and the earliest town services started up. And of course they were only copying the dreams of bigger communities to the south.
In proposing new railways, entrepreneurs were motivated by the idea of a 'portage' from Toronto to Georgian Bay, only one that was turned into a railway line. And the first east-west line was to serve as a 'bridge' between Niagara and Michigan. Both the Ontario Simcoe and Huron and the Great Western lines got underway at once.
The literature on historic railways is full of information on both changing decisions as well as the tangible things that interest historians, like locomotives and train stations. There is also a constant refrain of railways demanding 'bonuses' or subsidies from local towns I'm going to set those things aside for this story.
The map below shows the two old rail routes into Owen Sound, the green line on the left and the red line on the right. They both ended up with stations within sight of each other, on opposite sides of the harbour. Today one is a restaurant and the other is a museum. Remember there were the rocks of the Niagara Escarpment on both sides of the harbour, so there were significant grades to be incorporated in these lines. Neither line still exists today, but the rights-of-way do..
The Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway on the east side was the first of these, arriving to a large celebration in 1873. We cross its right-of-way every time we go to Owen Sound; it's now a walking and riding trail that extends far south of town, and the station in Owen Sound is a restaurant..
This line was built on narrow gauge tracks to save money, but soon there were demands for it to shift to the standard gauge being used elsewhere. They couldn't afford it themselves, so this led it to be sold to the Ontario and Quebec Railway, a subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1883.
The Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Railway, the first operating railway in the province, had opened a line from Toronto to Collingwood in 1853, and there was immediate pressure for it to be extended to Owen Sound. It almost got to Owen Sound first when it was built to Meaford in 1872, but it never made it further. That railway was renamed the Northern shortly after it was built, and it's the right-of-way of the Northern that provides for the Georgian Trail running east of Meaford.
There's a confusing history of names and amalgamations for the railway that eventually arrived on the west side of Owen Sound. To keep it simple the Port Dover and Lake Huron only made it as far as Stratford, and then, facing bankruptcy, amalgamated with the Stratford and Huron Railway. In 1881 these became a subsidiary of the Grand Trunk Railway, which finished the line to Wiarton, northwest of Owen Sound, in 1882.
With regular service but high prices from the CPR on the east side of town and regular service to Wiarton available a few miles to the west via the Grand Trunk Railway, Owen Sound began to agitate for a second railway line. Although it took over ten years, by 1894 a spur from Park Head on the Grand Trunk Railway was built and the first train chugged into the station on the west side of the bay. In 1923 the GTR was absorbed into the Canadian National Railway or CNR.
So I have my answer as to why Owen Sound has two different railway lines leading into town from east and west.
Of course the good times didn't last as cars, trucks and highways took over from trains. By 1985 the Northern Railway into Meaford was closed, and by 1995 both railways closed their lines to Owen Sound. All three old rights-of-way are today used as riding/walking trails.
It's a superb job you have done here on the history of these two railway lines. Much of Ontario's railroad history is maybe not well known or publicized. When you mentioned Port Dover and Stratford I can tell you that the rail line heading north from Port Dover intersected with the rail line between Galt and Stratford just west of my hometown of Tavistock. My Grandfather remembered that and a concrete abutment at that intersection still remains. Or at least it did the last time I walked along the railway tracks there over 30 years ago. Keep up the good work on the railway history.
ReplyDeleteThere were so, so many small railroads that were built or at least started to serve tiny communities that were never able to provide enough traffic to make the railroads profitable -- and then good highways were built which was the nail in the coffin for many of those railroads. It also seems that many may have been built to defraud investors and the small communities that supplied funds for the construction or to lure the railroads their way. But they do make for fascinating historical research.
ReplyDeleteMy sisters and I have eaten at that restaurant - often - and I've walked along the trail for the Altzheimer's walk a few years in a row.
ReplyDeleteI know so little about my relatives in that part of the province. Two of my mothers great uncles were railway men though, so they must have been involved with those events.
ReplyDeleteBack in Sarnia, it was the Grand Trunk and the Great Western Railway IIRC. The Grand Trunk line basically became the CN and is still in use. There is a tunnel that goes under the St Clair River over to Port Huron and then Chicago.
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