The old Parliament of Upper Canada had incorporated the earlier organization and in 1869 an Act was passed legalizing the amalgamation of railway and mining company.
During the summer of 1874 the Vice-Regal couple, Lord and Lady Dufferin, participated in an eleven hour outing from Cobourg via C.P. & M.R. & M. Co., Harwood, Rice Lake steamer and Hastings, and extracts from the Countess’ description of their ore mine inspection and experiences, as set down in Her Ladyship’s diary at the time, reads as follows:—
“I did not expect to care the least about it as we had seen so many untidy, stoney, barren places called mines, but this one was really an interesting sight. We found ourselves at the top of an enormous hole or cavern, 140 feet deep, large in proportion, perfectly open and light as day. The men looked like imps as they worked below and it was the sort of thing one sees represented, in miniature, in a fairy play. The sides were walls of iron: but, alas, coal is found only in the States....
“When we returned to the steamer we found a barge tied to its side covered in with green—a floating arbor—in which lunch was laid: and very glad we were of it, as we had breakfasted at 7.30 a.m. and it was now 2.00 p.m. The managers of the mines, the steamers, etc., are Americans, and we were their guests. Colonel Chambliss and General Fitzhugh, with their wives (two sisters), were our hosts. They lived in the hotel at which we stayed and are charming Southerners.”
It would appear that the bridging of Rice Lake was costly, but on account of engineering difficulties, not permanent. The alternate rigors of winter and spring reaction upset calculations as well as the bridge’s equilibrium. Those piles which had no foundation in fact—in the lake bottom, to be more exact—dangled from the upper work, an encumbrance instead of a support and many of the bolts disappeared, some claim by design of wrongly disposed persons. One autumn night, after a southbound train from Peterborough had passed over, the shivering spans succumbed to a gale and disappeared. To-day they remain the abode of lunge, bass and other amphibious denizens of the waters.
When the G.T.R. failed to popularize the line to Harwood for excursions, several rearrangements of the railway’s name and financial status subsequently occurred. Acts were passed by the Ontario Legislature and in 1887, after the sale of the Company’s bonds under an order of the Chancery Court the Federal Parliament incorporated the Cobourg, Blairton & Marmora Railway & Mining Co. to take over the property. The Municipality of Cobourg became at one time a guarantor in further reorganization. Presently, operation of the miniature system ceased altogether and protracted litigation was the precursor of dissolution. Thus did a budding nation in a constructive age behold a once famous railway rust into oblivion.
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EXECUTIVE OFFICERS AND CHIEF PASSENGER DEPARTMENT REPRESENTATIVES OF THE GRAND TRUNK RAILWAY’S NUMEROUS AND SCATTERED FAMILY.
JANUARY, 1916
J. E. Dalrymple,