Caraquet Railway
The Caraquet Railway was a railway company in the Canadian province of New Brunswick . It was founded on April 18, 1874 and intended to enable the last remaining primeval forest to be exploited in the province and to connect the fishing villages on the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the railway network. The railway line joined the Intercolonial Railway at Gloucester Junction and was built in the mid-1880s. The line to Caraquet was in operation by 1887 at the latest , but probably as far as the Gulf Coast in Shippigan . The total length of the line built in standard gauge was about 108 kilometers.
The railway had to cope with several accidents. The worst in New Brunswick so far occurred on December 17, 1887, shortly after the railway opened, west of Caraquet. A snow plow train traveling from Caraquet to Gloucester Junction fell into the Caraquet River after drift ice moved the bridge across the river. Eight people were killed. The following year, on August 4, 1888, the station building in East Bathurst burned down. The same fate befell a bridge near Burnsville , which caught fire from flying sparks from a neighboring sawmill.
The Gulf Shore Railway had a branch line to the late 1880s Tracedie opened that branched off in Pokemouche Junction from the Caraquet Railway. The two companies merged on April 13, 1911 to form the Caraquet and Gulf Shore Railway , which merged with the Canadian National Railways in 1920. The line has been closed since 1989 except for the seven-kilometer section Gloucester Junction-East Bathurst. This section is now served by the New Brunswick East Coast Railway .