Niagara, St. Catharines and Toronto Railway

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Niagara, St. Catharines and Toronto Railway (NS&T) was an electrified railway line on the Niagara Peninsula , which operated from 1899 to 1959. It is considered to be the first interurban in North America. From its headquarters in St. Catharines , it operated electric railcars to Niagara-on-the-Lake , Port Dalhousie , Niagara Falls , Welland and Port Colborne .

The Niagara, St. Catharines and Toronto Railway was founded in 1899 when a pre-existing railway, the St. Catharines and Niagara Central Railway, was reorganized. The new company was initially owned by the US before it was sold to a Toronto company in 1904 .

The initial route length was 32 km. This mainly included a connection between St. Catharines, Thorold and Port Dalhousie . Several plans existed to expand the rail network to Hamilton and Toronto , but none were successful. This included a plan to build a radial network along property rights for hydropower. Hydropower pioneer Adam Beck promoted this plan, but provincial and local governments rejected grant applications and the plan was halted.

In 1908 control was transferred to the Canadian Northern Railway (CNR). Due to financial difficulties, it was taken over by the Canadian government and renamed Canadian National Railway (CNR) in 1918. In 1923, the CNR founded a subsidiary, Canadian National Electric Railways , which united the NS&T , the Toronto Suburban Railway , the Toronto Eastern Railway and the Oshawa Railway under one name. The NS & T kept its previous name for the operation, the subsidiary was mainly of an administrative nature.

The network was expanded to Port Colborne and extensively repaired in the mid-1920s. In 1929, NS & T started bus operations as an addition to its rail network. From the mid-1930s, buses also replaced existing routes. During the Second World War, rail transport experienced a brief boom due to the rationing of fuel for buses.

After the war, a program was started to replace many of the electric railcars with diesel-powered ones. However, the decline of the railway continued and in 1951 and 1954 passenger traffic on the two main routes was shifted to buses. The final cessation of rail traffic took place in 1959. A year later, the existence of NS & T ended as an independent unit of the Canadian National Railway.

literature

  • John M. Mills: History of the Niagara, St. Catharines, & Toronto Railway . Upper Canada Railway Society and Ontario Electric Railway Historical Association, Rockwood (Ontario) 1967.