Intercolonial Railway
The Intercolonial Railway was a state-owned railway company in the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia , New Brunswick and Québec . It was created on December 21, 1867 through the merger of the Nova Scotia Railway ( Halifax - Truro - Pictou route ) and the Eastern Extension of the European and North American Railway ( Saint John - Point du Chene route). The construction work for the connection of the two networks, which took place in November 1872 with the completion of the 190-kilometer Moncton- Truro line, soon began . The section from Moncton to Amherst had already been opened on December 29, 1870 . All of these lines were built in colonial gauge (1676 mm).
Another new line was to connect the network in Rivière-du-Loup to the Grand Trunk Railway and was built from both sides. In August 1874 the section from Rivière-du-Loup to Sainte-Flavie was opened. A few weeks later, the Grand Trunk switched its main lines from colonial gauge to standard gauge (1435 mm), which meant that the Intercolonial also rebuilt its lines. The gauging was completed in 1875, at the same time the line from Moncton to Campbelltown was opened . The entire new line from Moncton to Rivière-du-Loup finally went into operation on June 26, 1876, increasing the total length of the intercolonial network to 1,149 kilometers. The through traffic was officially started on July 1, 1876.
On August 1, 1879, the Intercolonial acquired the 200-kilometer Rivière-du-Loup– Lévis section from the Grand Trunk Railway. A short branch line (11 km) to the port and industrial city of Dalhousie went into operation on June 30, 1884. During this time, the Intercolonial also acquired the right to use the Grand Trunk line to Montréal that followed in Lévis , which meant that there was no need to change trains. Since then, the Ocean Limited express train has been running from Montréal to Halifax - until today . In 1887 the connection from Oxford Junction was opened on the main line to Stellarton on the former Nova Scotia Railway, creating a shorter connection to Pictou. In 1890 a 274-kilometer branch line was built from New Glasgow to Sydney on Cape Breton Island . The entire network now had a length of 1840 kilometers.
After the Drummond County Railway, with its 100-kilometer stretch from Lévis to Sainte-Rosalie, was leased from March 1, 1898 , the shared use of the Grand Trunk Railway between Lévis and Montréal ended, but a new joint-use contract for the Sainte-Rosalie section was signed –Montréal closed. The Canada Eastern Railway was bought up in 1904 and its route to Fredericton was partially re-routed in 1912. From January 1, 1914, the Intercolonial leased its branch line to Windsor (Nova Scotia) to the Dominion Atlantic Railway . On August 1, 1914, the various state railway companies in Canada merged to form the Canadian Government Railways , which later became part of the Canadian National Railways .
Most of the lines of the former Intercolonial are still in operation; of the main lines, only the former Canada Eastern and the Oxford Junction – Stellarton line have been closed. Passenger traffic is now carried out by VIA Rail . Since the Canadian National was privatized in 1995, some sections of the intercolonial network have been sold to local railroad companies, namely the route from Sainte-Rosalie to Campbelltown on the Chemin de fer de Matapédia et du Golfe , from there to Moncton on the New Brunswick East Coast Railway and the Truro – Sydney route to the Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia Railway . On November 3, 2008, however, the Canadian National Railway announced that it would buy back the Chemin de fer de Matapédia et du Golfe and the New Brunswick East Coast Railway.
literature
- Jay Underwood: Built for War. Canada's Intercolonial Railway. Railfare DC Books, Montréal 2005, ISBN 1-897190-01-8 .
Web links
- A longer article on the intercolonial main line and its branches on www.trainweb.org
- Intercolonial Railway ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia .