Stolid elderly female—“Yus—aint it? My Bill’s a-drivin’ of the ingin’ an’ ’e can make her go when ’e’s got a drop o’ drink in ’im.—Tit Bits”
1853—Telegraphy was used by the Grand Trunk Railway. H. P. Dwight is said to have been the father of the utility in Canada.
1853–4–5—Great Western Railway of Canada built from Niagara Falls via London to Windsor beside Detroit River.
1853–63—C. J. Brydges was managing director, respectively of the Great Western Railway and Grand Trunk Railway in Canada.
1854, July 22—Victoria Bridge over St. Lawrence River, which cost $7,000,000, was started and in November, 1859, it was opened for traffic.
1855—H. C. Bourlier, formerly Western Passenger Agent Allan Line, Toronto, was manager, agent and conductor of trains on 48 miles of line from Point Levis to St. Thomas, Quebec, on the I.C.R., which he designated the “Tommy Cod” Line.
1856, Oct. 27—The Grand Trunk Railway, incorporated 1852, operated its first train from Montreal to Toronto in fourteen hours, the Quebec Metropolis celebrating the event by a banquet in the Point St. Charles Shops when 4,400 people sat down beside a mile of tablecloth.
1858—Chicago & Alton Railroad experimented with George Pullman’s car and Colonel J. L. Barnes, afterwards for years superintendent on the Santa Fe System, was the first parlor car conductor.
1860–63—A brother of John Bell, late General Counsel of Grand Trunk Ry., genial, humorous Robert Bell, built and managed the Prescott & Bytown (Ottawa) Railway, an early undertaking born of many vicissitudes, which resorted in extremity to wooden rails to enter Bytown.
1864—The first successful trial of a railway postal car, assorting mail matter in transit, occurred on the “C. & N.W.R.” and other lines.