The Guelph Junction Railway is a shortline railway owned by the City of Guelph, Ontario, and serves the city's northwest industrial park. [1]
The railway was the first federally chartered railway in the Commonwealth of Nations to be owned by a municipality, and, along with the Greater Winnipeg Water District Railway and the Capital Railway, is among the few remaining municipally-owned railways in Canada. [2]
The railway was incorporated in 1884 [3] by Guelph merchants because of the indifference of the Grand Trunk Railway, which was the only choice for freight since 1856. Competition was the only answer to high rates. These plans were expanded in 1887, when authorization was obtained to lay down a further line to the northwest of Guelph, originally with the intention of going to Goderich but eventually ending at Linwood. [4] The intention was to build tracks 15 miles (24 km) south to the CPR main line in Campbellville, Ontario. Construction began in May that year, and it opened on 20 August 1888. Rather than operate the link themselves, they leased it to the Canadian Pacific Railway [5] who offered twice daily passenger service as well as freight service. The City of Guelph was a majority (70 percent) owner and in November 1910 it acquired the rest of the stock from the merchants for sole ownership.
The Canadian Pacific Railway erected a passenger station and freight shed at Priory Square in Guelph, a location which is now the River Run Centre. [6] [7]
In 1904, the Railway obtained authorization to construct branch lines from Linwood by way of Stratford to St. Marys and Clinton, and from Linwood to Listowel. [8] The Stratford branch was never constructed, while the Listowel branch opened in 1908. [9]
In December 1997, the Canadian Pacific Railway did not renew the lease with Guelph Junction Railway. [2] Undeterred, the city decided it would continue Guelph Junction Railway as an independent railway and contracted with Ontario Southland Railway (OSR) to provide the freight movement services, effective January 1, 1998. The Guelph Junction Railway, via OSR, provides customers with dual access service to the two major railways (CNR and CPR), which, along with good locally managed service, has increased traffic considerably. Much of the cargo is grain, plastics, chemicals, lumber, aggregates and other industrial products. [1] Several other companies have expressed interest in operating the Guelph Junction Railway after the OSR's lease expires in July 2020. [10] The Goderich-Exeter Railway will operate GJR when OSR's contract expires.
The Railway promoted an expansion of its operations through the incorporation of the Guelph and Goderich Railway in 1901, [11] [9] which added a line extending 80 miles (130 km) from Guelph to Goderich that was completed in August 1907. The GJR was authorized to transfer its present northwest line to either the CPR or the G&G in order to further the project. [12] The whole line was leased to the CPR, which had also incurred the cost of building it, and it was vested in the CPR, and the company dissolved, in 1956. [13] It was in use until 1988 when it was abandoned by the CPR. [2]
From Summer 2008 to August 2011, a 4.5 hour passenger tour service travelled the entire Guelph Junction Railway track as the Guelph Junction Express with its own 1950s vintage stainless steel cars. The service was owned by private individuals operating as Destiny Tours International. [14] [15]
The Canadian Pacific Railway, also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited, known until 2023 as Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001.
The Canadian National Railway Company is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States.
Wingham is a community located in the municipality of North Huron, Ontario, Canada, which is located in Huron County. Wingham became part of North Huron in 2001 when the Ontario government imposed amalgamation on the former township of East Wawanosh, the village of Blyth, and the town of Wingham.
The Ontario and Quebec Railway (O&Q) was a railway located in southern and eastern Ontario, Canada. It was initially chartered in March 1881 by managers of the Canadian Pacific Railway to run between Toronto and Perth, where it would connect, via a short branch line, to the CPR-controlled Brockville and Ottawa Railway. Construction began in 1882, and the line was completed in August 1884.
The Toronto Suburban Railway was a Canadian electric railway operator with local routes in west Toronto, and a radial (interurban) route to Guelph.
The Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railway was a railway based in Hamilton that ran in Southern Ontario from 1892 to 1987. It never reached the other two cities in its name although it had branch lines extending to Dunnville and Port Maitland.
The Goderich–Exeter Railway is a short line freight railway that operates around 70 miles (110 km) of track in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Created in 1992, it was the first short line railway in Canada to be purchased from a class I railway, in this case Canadian National Railway (CN). It took over operation of further CN trackage in 1998. As of 2004, the railway had 44 employees. Its headquarters are in Stratford, Ontario, and owned by short-line railroad holding company Genesee & Wyoming.
The Michigan Central Railway Tunnel is a railroad tunnel under the Detroit River connecting Detroit, Michigan, in the United States with Windsor, Ontario, in Canada. The U.S. entrance is south of Porter and Vermont streets near Rosa Parks Boulevard. The Canadian entrance is south of Wyandot Street West between Cameron and Wellington Avenues. It was built by the Detroit River Tunnel Company for the Canada Southern Railway, leased by the Michigan Central Railroad and owned by the New York Central Railroad. The tunnel opened in 1910 and is still in use today by the Canadian Pacific Railway.
The Grand River Railway was an interurban electric railway in what is now the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, in Southwestern Ontario, Canada.
The Huron Central Railway is a railway operating in northern Ontario, Canada. It is operated by Genesee & Wyoming Canada, the Canadian subsidiary of Genesee & Wyoming.
The Northern and Pacific Junction Railway (N&PJ) is a historic railway located in northern Ontario, Canada. It connected the Northern Railway of Canada's endpoint in Gravenhurst to the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) at Nipissing Junction, near North Bay. The N&PJ provided an almost straight line north-south route from Toronto to the transcontinental line, competing with a similar line of the Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) a short distance to the west.
The Credit Valley Railway was a railway located in Ontario, Canada from Toronto to St. Thomas. Chartered in 1871 by Ontario railway magnate George Laidlaw, it operated as an independent company until 1883 when it was leased by the Ontario and Quebec Railway, a Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) operating company building a network of lines in southern Ontario.
The Ontario Southland Railway, Inc. is an independently held short line operator. The company was founded in 1992 to purchase 27 kilometres (17 mi) of track between Tillsonburg and Ingersoll, Ontario from the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). In 2009, a second line was added, as 51 kilometres (32 mi) of CPR track from Woodstock to St. Thomas, Ontario were integrated into the system. In 2015, Ontario Southland began leasing the ex-Canadian National Cayuga Subdivision between St. Thomas and Delhi, Ontario, which had been abandoned by its former shortline operator the St. Thomas and Eastern Railway in 2013.
The Algoma Eastern Railway was a railway in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. Originally known as the Manitoulin and North Shore Railway (M&NS) with a charter dating back to 1888, the full mainline was opened to traffic in 1913, serving the area along the north shore of Lake Huron between Sudbury and Little Current on Manitoulin Island. It and its sister railway, the Algoma Central, were originally owned by the Lake Superior Corporation, a conglomerate centered on Sault Ste. Marie which was founded by the American industrialist Francis Clergue. Despite ambitious plans to expand across Lake Huron to the Bruce Peninsula using a railcar ferry, the company failed to develop further and was acquired by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1930. With freight traffic low during the Great Depression, Canadian Pacific soon abandoned much of the Algoma Eastern mainline in favor of its own Algoma Branch. Remaining sections of the Algoma Eastern line were turned into spurs, with the longest surviving section operated as a branch line known as the Little Current Subdivision.
Leaside station is a former railway station in Toronto that served Leaside and Thorncliffe Park. The Canadian Pacific Railway built the station in 1894 to serve the new community of Leaside, on a railway line leased from the Ontario and Quebec Railway.
The Guelph and Goderich Railway was a railway in southern Ontario, Canada. It came about from a desire for a connection from Guelph to the harbour at Goderich on Lake Huron.
The Preston and Berlin Street Railway was an interurban electric street railway which served the 12.68 kilometres (7.88 mi) between what was then the towns of Preston and Berlin in Midwestern Ontario, Canada. The company was formed in 1894, but lay dormant until 1900, when construction finally began. The company began operation in 1904.
The Wellington, Grey and Bruce Railway (WG&BR) was a railway in Ontario, Canada. It ran roughly northwest from Guelph to the port town of Southampton on Lake Huron, a distance of 101 miles (163 km). It also had a 66-mile (106 km) branch line splitting off at Palmerston and running roughly westward to Kincardine, another port town. A branch running south from Southampton was built during the construction of the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in the 1970s.
The Lake Erie and Northern Railway was an interurban electric railway which operated in the Grand River Valley in Ontario, Canada. The railway owned and operated a north–south mainline which ran from Galt in the north to Port Dover on the shore of Lake Erie in the south. Along the way, it ran through rural areas of Waterloo County, Brant County, and Norfolk County, as well as the city of Brantford, where it had an interchange with the Brantford and Hamilton Electric Railway. Construction on the mainline began in 1913. The railway began operations in 1916 as a subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), which had purchased the line before construction had finished. In 1931, it was consolidated with the Grand River Railway under a single CPR subsidiary, the Canadian Pacific Electric Lines (CPEL), which managed both interurban railways, though they continued to exist as legally separate entities. Passenger service was discontinued in 1955 but electric freight operations continued until 1961, when the LE&N's electric locomotives were replaced by diesel CPR locomotives and the line was de-electrified. In the same year, service on the mainline from Simcoe to Port Dover was discontinued, but the remainder continued to operate as a branchline which as early as 1975 was known as the CP Simcoe Subdivision. The remainder of the line was officially abandoned in the early 1990s, ending almost seventy-five years of operation.
The Waterloo Junction Railway (WJR) is a short line railway in the Region of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It runs northward from the former Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) North Main Line in downtown Kitchener, through Waterloo and St. Jacobs before terminating in Elmira. It is currently owned by the City of Waterloo and operated by CN as the Waterloo Spur. The Waterloo Central Railway runs tourist trains on the line, and the Ion rapid transit runs on the route for a short distance.
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