The records for 1910 show an average of 26.6 freight cars per train and the average weight of “revenue” freight carried, per train, was 299 net tons.
The original gauge of the Grand Trunk was five feet six inches, except that portion between Port Huron and Detroit, where the “narrow gauge” of four feet eight and one-half inches was used. Sir Henry’s report recommended the adoption of the wider gauge for the whole of the road, bringing it into conformity with the other lines on the continent.
The year of Sir Henry’s visit was also the year of Confederation, and this change, which had so tremendous an effect upon Canada’s history, had also an important bearing upon the history of the Grand Trunk Railway. The new Dominion Government, being desirous of opening up the country purchased on the 17th of July, 1879, that portion of the Grand Trunk road which lies between Riviere du Loup and Point Levis, with the object of making it a portion of the new Government road, which subsequently became the Intercolonial Railway.
With the proceeds of this sale the Grand Trunk agreed to construct a line between Port Huron, Michigan, and Chicago. The International Bridge Company undertook another great engineering feat in 1857, in the building of the Niagara River Bridge, between Fort Erie and Buffalo. This bridge was completed in 1873, and entirely rebuilt to accommodate the heavier traffic in 1900. The two systems of railways, the Grand Trunk and Great Western, were amalgamated into the present system under agreement dated August 12, 1882.
The directors started out in 1889 to make the Grand Trunk the longest double tracked system on this continent, and the line is now double tracked from St. Rosalie, a point thirty-eight miles east of Montreal and St. Johns, twenty-seven miles south, to Chicago, an unbroken double tracked run of 907 miles. With other double tracked lines connecting principal cities the Grand Trunk is now in possession of 1,037 miles of duplicate tracks.
The Grand Trunk owns and controls ten grain elevators in various parts of the Dominion and the United States, having a total capacity of 20,000,000 bushels of grain. The latest of these, an elevator with a capacity of 5,500,000 bushels, is located at Fort William, and was built in connection with the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.
The four principal bridges owned by the Company, the Victoria Bridge, the Coteau Landing Bridge, the steel arch bridge across Niagara Gorge, and the International Bridge across the Niagara River, have a total length of 16,653 feet, and the railway owns other bridges in different parts of the continent, which have a total of 18.43 miles.
Recent improvements and developments of the line in the city and district of Montreal include the erection of the magnificent new offices on McGill Street and the promotion, in connection with the Jacques Cartier Union Railway, of a belt line around the city. Also, in 1892, the company secured control of the Canadian Express Company, which now operates over all the Grand Trunk and connecting lines from Montreal.
INITIALS OF SIR GEORGE SIMPSON AND HIS INDIAN GUIDE FOUND NEAR BANFF IN 1913