Montreal – Island Pond railway line
| Montreal QC– Island Pond VT |
|
|---|---|
| Route length: | 236.6 km |
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) |
| Dual track : | Montreal – Sainte-Rosalie |
The railway Montreal Iceland Pond is a railway line in Quebec City ( Canada ) and Vermont ( United States ). It is 236.6 kilometers long and connects the cities of Montreal , Saint-Lambert , Saint-Hyacinthe , Windsor , Sherbrooke and Island Pond , among others . The route belongs from Montreal to Sainte-Rosalie of the Canadian National Railway and from there to Island Pond of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad , which operate the freight traffic on these sections. The Canadian National also has the right to use the route from Sainte-Rosalie to Richmond .
Three railway companies operate sections of the route with passenger trains. The VIA Rail Canada used the route from Montreal to Sainte-Rosalie for the trains to Quebec . The Agence métropolitaine de transport operates a S-Bahn-like network in the greater Montreal area and serves the section from Montreal to Mont-Saint-Hilaire . The Amtrak uses the part of the track from Montreal to Cannon Junction for its once-daily moving express train Adirondack to New York.
history
Prehistory and construction
After John Alfred Poor had founded the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad in the United States in February 1845 , the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railway was founded in Canada on March 17, 1845 by business friends who were friends. The goal of the two companies was to build a railroad line from Montreal to Portland . The two companies wanted to push construction from the endpoints and meet in Island Pond. Since many lines in Canada were built in the colonial gauge (1676 mm), this gauge was also chosen for the line to Portland.
Montreal could not be directly connected at first because the St. Lawrence River had not yet been bridged. Therefore, a temporary terminus was built in Longueuil across from Montreal and a ferry was installed. Construction began in October 1846 and the first section from Longueuil to Saint-Basile-le-Grand went into operation on December 27, 1848. Richmond was reached on October 15, 1851, Sherbrooke on September 11, 1852, and finally Island Pond on July 11, 1853. The Portland line had already been completed a few weeks beforehand, so that continuous operations could begin on July 18, 1853. In the meantime, the Grand Trunk Railway had taken over the two railway companies. Since the solution with the ferry in Longueuil was unsatisfactory, the Pont Victoria was built in Montreal and from December 12, 1859, the trains could go directly to downtown Montreal, where from 1864 they, like the trains to Toronto, the Gare terminus Used Bonaventure . The provisional line to Longueuil has been closed.
Conversions
The line was an important main line, especially between Montreal and Sainte-Rosalie, which was expanded to double-track soon after opening. The busy route to Québec branched off in Sainte-Rosalie . After other railway companies began to convert their lines to standard gauge, the Grand Trunk Railway decided to do the same in 1873. In just 12 hours on the night of September 25th to 26th, 1874, the entire 477-kilometer route from Montreal to Portland was nailed to standard gauge.
In 1897 the Montreal and Southern Counties Railway was founded , which wanted to build an interurban line from Montreal to Sherbrooke. In Montreal, a terminus for the overland trams was built on McGill Street. Shortly before the Pont Victoria the line threaded into the main line of the railway, which was electrified from here to Saint-Lambert. After the Saint-Lambert train station, the Interurban line branched off and led to the Montreal-Sud district. This line was opened on November 1, 1909. In 1911 the Grand Trunk Railway bought the railway. Now the construction of the originally planned main line towards Sherbrooke began. It branched off at the East End stop at the eastern bridgehead of the Pont Victoria and from 1913 led to Marieville, later to Granby. Sherbrooke was never reached by Interurban trains. In 1956 the railway was shut down and the overhead line on the Pont Victoria dismantled. In the meantime, the Grand Trunk Railway had been taken over by the Canadian National Railway in 1923 , which also took over operations on the line.
The Bonaventure terminus in Montreal, which had to be rebuilt in 1916 after a major fire, was shut down in November 1952. Since 1943, all trains from the east to the Gare Centrale on the railway line to Ottawa , after this was connected to the line to Island Pond. In recent years, Bonaventure station has only served suburban traffic to the south-west.
In 1958 the Canadian National rebuilt the track system in Saint-Lambert. Branching off from the Pont Victoria, they built a new double-track line that went south around the Saint-Lambert lock and enabled trains to pass through when the lift bridge was open.
Decline and change of operator
On August 12, 1967, the Canadian National stopped passenger traffic between Coaticook and Island Pond, after a pair of trains had only run on this section on summer weekends since 1960. Around 1970 the last passenger trains ran between Sainte-Rosalie and Coaticook. In 1978 VIA Rail Canada took over the passenger traffic on the remaining section. In 1984 the Canadian National planned to shut down the line from Sainte-Rosalie to Island Pond. Instead, however, they sold them on May 22, 1989 to the Emons Transportation Group, which has continued to operate freight traffic on this section since then under the name of St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad .
In 1986 the old main line in the direction of New York from Saint-Lambert to Brossard was closed and a new connection to the Cannon Junction – Marieville railway was built. Since then, the trains in the direction of New York between Montreal and Cannon Junction have been using the route. Since then, this has also applied to the Amtrak express trains , namely the Adirondack , which is still in service today, to New York and the Montréaler to Washington DC, which was discontinued in 1995 .
The Agence métropolitaine de transport (AMT) has been operating suburban transport to Mont-Saint-Hilaire since 2000 . Seven pairs of trains run on weekdays, mostly in the direction of impact.
Route description
The former terminus of the Grand Trunk main lines to Toronto, Québec and Portland, Gare Bonaventure , was on Rue Saint-Jacques. It was built in 1847 by the Montreal and Lachine Railway and taken over by Grand Trunk in 1864. From 1859 to 1864, the trains ended at Pointe Saint-Charles station, which has served as a freight station ever since. However, passenger trains continued to stop here until 1943. After this station, the line crosses the three-kilometer-long Pont Victoria . The bridge was officially opened on August 25, 1860 as the longest bridge in the world at the time. Train traffic over the bridge had already started in December 1859. The route continues through Saint-Lambert, where there is a long-distance train station where, in addition to the AMT suburban trains, trains to Québec and New York also stop. After another six kilometers, Saint-Hubert is reached, where the provisional route to Longueuil branched off until 1859.
Further east, the route now runs out of the metropolitan area of Montreal and reaches the Rivière Richelieu at McMasterville , which it crosses on a steel girder bridge. Shortly thereafter, Mont-Saint-Hilaire is reached, where the suburban trains end. The Thériault parking facility is attached to the station. From Mont-Saint-Hilaire to Sainte-Rosalie the route runs in a straight line, crossing Sainte-Madelaine and Saint-Hyacinthe and crossing the Rivière Yamaska . The junction station at Sainte-Rosalie Junction consists of a railway that previously crossed the main line at the same level. Today the track crossing itself has been shut down, trains that want to use the crossing railway line have to turn heads in the station. Behind the station, the main line branches off towards Québec and the double-track section of the line ends. This is also the point of operator change between Canadian National and St. Lawrence & Atlantic.
From Sainte-Rosalie, the route leads east. It crosses the Rivière Noire twice at Upton and reaches Acton Vale, the next hub station. The Enlaugra – Drummondville railway line that once crossed here has been closed. The route continues east through sparsely populated areas and crosses the Rivière Saint-François near Richmond . The route now follows this river in a south-easterly direction and crosses it again in Bromptonville. It only leaves the Saint-François valley in Lennoxville and now heads south in the valley of the Rivière Coaticook and uphill into the northern foothills of the Montagnes Vertes .
Less than 50 kilometers from Lennoxville, the route crosses the state border into Vermont. The route continues along the upper reaches of the Coaticook and along the Norton Pond , where this river has its source. This is where the steep stretch begins, where additional leader or push locomotives had to be coupled to the trains during the steam locomotive era . Over a ridge, the route now winds down to Island Pond on the lake of the same name. The line merges here into the Portland – Island Pond railway line .
Sources and further information
- Individual evidence
- ↑ Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. New England & Maritime Canada. SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 2010.
- ↑ Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. Quebec & Labrador + Newfoundland. SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 2010.
- literature
- Robert C. Jones: Railroads of Vermont, Volume I / II. New England Press Inc., Shelburne, VT 1993. ISBN 1-881535-01-0 .
- Robert M. Lindsell: The Rail Lines of Northern New England. Branch Line Press, Pepperell, MA 2000, ISBN 0-942147-06-5 .