3. OTHER SYSTEMS—THE “INTERCOLONIAL”—THE CANADIAN NORTHERN AND ITS MOUNTAIN TUNNEL.
Night and day from January 1st to December 31st, year in and year out, the heavily loaded passenger and freight trains pass into and out of the railway terminals of Montreal, bearing to their various destinations millions of human beings and thousands of tons of freight.
Altogether eight important railways have entrance to Montreal at the time of writing, while yet another transcontinental line, the Canadian Northern, is planning a new and imposing terminal in connection with the tunnelling of Mount Royal, which is the most important engineering undertaking in Montreal projected since the construction of the Victoria tubular bridge. At the present time the Canadian Pacific, the Grand Trunk, the Intercolonial, the Canadian Northern, the New York Central, the Rutland, the Delaware & Hudson, and the Central Vermont railroads are all running trains directly into Montreal. The railway freight yards are crowded with cars bearing the initials of practically every road of any importance on the continent.
This huge business in carrying, of such vital importance to the city of Montreal, yet so little appreciated, because of our familiarity with it, is less than a century old, for the success of the locomotive was not admitted until the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1830. On the news of this the first railway in Canada, the Champlain & St. Lawrence, was chartered in 1831 to run from La Prairie to St. Johns, P.Q., and opened for traffic with horses in 1836 and first worked by the locomotives in 1837. Its length was only sixteen miles.
The rails were of wood with flat bars of iron spiked on them, and from the tendency of this class of rail to curl or bend upwards as the wheels passed over it, it became known as the snake rail. The first locomotive used on the line was sent from Europe, accompanied by an engineer, who for some unexplained reason had it caged up and secreted from the public eye.
The trial trip was made by moonlight in the presence of a few interested parties and it is not described as a success. Several attempts were made to get the “Kitten,” for such was the nick-name applied to this pioneer locomotive, to run to St. Johns, but in vain: the engine proved refractory and horses were substituted for it.
It is related that a practical engineer being called in from “the States,” the engine which was thought to be hopelessly unmanageable, was pronounced in good order, requiring only plenty of wood and water. This opinion proved correct, for after a little practice the extraordinary rate of speed of twenty miles per hour was obtained. It was a “strap” rail until 1847 when the heavy T-iron was laid.
The Champlain & St. Lawrence Railway, thus inaugurated the railway era of Canada in the year 1832, and the line continued to be operated as a separate and distinct organization for just forty years. In 1872 it was made a part of the Grand Trunk Railway, and it is operated as a part of the Grand Trunk organization at the present time.
The Atlantic & St. Lawrence Railroad followed the Champlain & St. Lawrence. Although not a Canadian railroad, this line had a tremendous influence on the development of the country, since it gave the Canadian people access for the first time to an all-the-year-round port. Halifax and St. John were yet mere villages without any rail communication with the industrial heart of the country, separated from it by that vast stretch of then undeveloped and almost unexplored country which we now recognize as lower Quebec and upper New Brunswick. The Atlantic & St. Lawrence line gave access to the port of Portland, running from that city through a thriving agricultural country to Norton Mills, Vermont, just on the Canadian border. Norton Mills and La Prairie, now merely villages without any special importance, were at this period in Canada’s growth railway terminals of consequence.
The Atlantic & St. Lawrence road was built with a purpose. It was chartered in 1845, and long before it was completed, in 1852, to be exact, the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada was granted a charter by the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, which, with subsequent additions, provided for the construction of the present Grand Trunk line between Riviere du Loup, Quebec, and Sarnia, Ontario.