New Brunswick Railway
The New Brunswick Railway (NBR) is a former railway company in New Brunswick ( Canada ) with headquarters in Woodstock . In 1870 the large landowner Alexander Gibson founded the New Brunswick Land and Railway Company with the aim of connecting the provincial capital Fredericton with the city of Edmundston in the north-west of the province and thus being able to transport the timber yields from his lands. First he decided to run the route in Cape gauge (1067 mm).
Construction began in Fredericton and on May 1, 1873, the first section to Woodstock could be opened, where there was a connection to the route of the New Brunswick and Canada Railway (NBCR). The further route in the direction of Edmundston branched off in Newburg and reached Florenceville (New Brunswick) on June 9, 1875 . In December 1877 Grand Falls was reached and on October 1, 1878, the entire route to Edmundston could finally be opened to traffic.
In addition, a route from Tobique to the state border in Maine was opened as early as 1875 . From there, the route first led to Fort Fairfield and was operated by the Aroostook River Railroad , which was leased from the NBR from January 12, 1878. The section from Tobique to Aroostook merged into the section of the main line opened in 1877. In October 1880, the entire land of the NBR was transferred to the New Brunswick Land and Lumber Company , whereupon the company was reorganized in 1881 into the New Brunswick Railway Company .
In June 1881 the network was changed to standard gauge, as the railways in Woodstock, Edmundston and Fredericton also had this gauge. On July 1, 1882, the NBR finally leased the NBCR, which gave the network a connection to the Atlantic coast and opened up the entire western border of the province of New Brunswick. A year later, on July 1, 1883, the St. John and Maine Railway followed , which had previously been spun off from the European and North American Railway and was leased for 997 years. In 1885, the NBR bought the Fredericton Railway with its route from Fredericton Junction to Fredericton, which was an important link between the two main lines of the NBR.
The history of the New Brunswick Railway ended on July 1, 1890, when the Canadian Pacific Railway took over the company on that day. Of the entire network of the former NBR, only the short section Cyr Junction – Grand Falls of the actual NBR main line and the former St. John and Maine Railway from St. John to Vanceboro and the former NBCR line from McAdam to St. Stephen existed in 1999 and Milltown .
The section from Edmundston to Cyr Junction had already been closed in the 1930s, as the National Transcontinental Railway had built a parallel line. The routes of the former NBR were transferred to the Canadian Atlantic Railway (CAR) in 1988, which shut down almost the entire network from 1988 onwards. The remaining section at Grand Falls is now operated by the Canadian National Railway , the remaining lines are now owned by the New Brunswick Southern Railway, founded in 1994 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. New England & Maritime Canada. SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 1999.
literature
- Charles Wassermann: Canadian Pacific - The great railroad. Herbig, Munich and Berlin 1979. ISBN 3776609354