Compagnie de chemin de fer Baie des Ha! Ha!
| Compagnie de chemin de fer Baie des Ha! Ha! Compagnie de chemin de fer Roberval-Sanguenay |
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|---|---|
.jpg) Steam locomotive of the Compagnie de chemin de fer Roberval-Saguenay in
front of the pulp mill in Chicoutimi | |
| Route length: | 30 km |
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) |
The Compagnie de chemin de fer Baie des Ha! Ha! was a rail company in Canada . It built, owned and operated a standard gauge - railway from Saint-Alphonse on Kenogami for Jonquière .
history
The company was on 25 April 1908 by a group of residents from Bagotville with registered capital of 600,000 CAD founded. The name is derived from the bay of Baie des Ha , located on the Saguenay Fjord ! Ha! into which the Rivière Ha! Ha! flows out. The new company hired O'Brien, Gagné & Jenning to carry out the construction work. Work began in the autumn of 1909 and was temporarily suspended in 1910 after 6 people, including engineer Gagné, were killed in an explosion.
The line connecting Saint-Alphonse to Jonquière via Kénogami was inaugurated eight months later, on December 13, 1910. In addition to passenger transport between Saint-Alphonse and Chicoutimi, the railroad enabled pulp to be transported from the Poulperie de Chicoutimi ( Chicoutimi Pulp Company ) to the deep-sea port in Bagotville. In 1911, the manager of the pulp mill in Chicoutimi J.-E.-A. Dubuc another railway company called Compagnie de chemin de fer Roberval-Saguenay , which was to connect Jonquière with the region around Lac-Saint-Jean . But the project didn't get going. Two years later, J.-E.-A. Dubuc the Compagnie de chemin de fer Baie des Ha! Ha! and united them with his Compagnie de chemin de fer Roberval-Sanguenay to transport the pulp produced in Chicoutimi at a lower cost. The sale was completed on January 28, 1914. The route from the pulp mill to that of Saint-Alphonse was 30 km. The company served the area around Jonquière, Chicoutimi and Saint-Alphonse.
Finally, the Alcan company began to take an interest in the railway company in the 1920s when it became active in Saguenay. In 1926, when the assets of the Chicoutimi pulp mill were liquidated, the railway company was sold to Alcan. The Roberval & Saguenay Railway built an extension from Arvida to Shipshaw in 1926 to enable the transport of construction materials for the dam for the Chētes-à-Caron hydroelectric power station. Today the route network is 160 km long.