The Victoria Railway (Lindsay, Fenelon Falls, Kinmount, Haliburton)

THE BACKGROUND The Railway Age began in Upper Canada in 1849 with the passing of the Railway Guarantee Act for loan interest on the construction of railways not less than 75 miles in length. Before then, travel and the movement of goods in Upper Canada had been primarily dependent on waterways, and to some extent on such trails that passed for roads. Railway development then followed quickly in Victoria County. The Victoria Railway was the second pioneer railway to make a connection with Lindsay in 1875 at what was then its Midland Railway station at King and St. Paul Streets (The Midland Ry was originally the Port Hope, Lindsay & Beaverton Railway, which had been the first to arrive there in 1857). In 1877, the Victoria Railway applied to Lindsay for permission to extend its railway down Victoria Ave to Glenelg St. to connect up with the Whitby, Port Perry & Lindsay Railway. Upon the town’s approval, a brick station was built on the east side of Victoria at Melbourne to serve those two railways as a “union” station. The Victoria Railway was therefore also the second railway to reach downtown Lindsay. This 55-mile long line was built to the standard gauge (4’ 8½“) from the outset. It was initially intended as an immi- grant settlement project, whereby those recruited would be encouraged with land concessions to settle along the line they had built, and give the railway their business. The project began as the Fenelon Falls Railway in 1871, changed its name in 1872 to the Lindsay, Fenelon Falls & Ottawa River Valley Railway , and again (to improve its promotional prospects) in 1873 to the Victoria Railway , by which time other motivations for the railway were the reputed iron ore deposits in the Haliburton Highlands and the stands of timber in what is now Algonquin Park. Politically, conflicts over the necessary subsidies for the line caused 23 northern Peterborough and Victoria County townships to secede and form the provisional County of Haliburton. GEORGE LAIDLAW 1828 – 1889 The railway’s first president was George Laidlaw who emigrated from Scotland in 1855, obtained a position as a grain buyer with the Toronto distillery firm of Gooderham & Worts, and persuaded his employers to invest in the (3’6”) narrow gauge concept in sponsoring feeder lines for their business. He subsequently became a railway pro- moter in his own right, and was the predominant influence in bringing about the Victoria Railway. He retired in 1881 to his estate at Balsam Lake. THE VICTORIA RAILWAY At its Lindsay end, the Victoria Railway did not originate from downtown, but started out from the top of William Street in 1875 with a triangular wye formation connected to the Midland Railway line to create Victoria Junction (near present-day William St. and Orchard Park Road), permitting direct traffic from the north with both Port Hope (through Lindsay along the Scugog) and with Beaverton, but as noted, also enabling it to use the Midland Railway station at King and St. Paul Streets in Lindsay as its initial terminus. The first sod was turned on August 5, 1874 in the vicinity of Victoria Junction, with the Hon. Oliver Mowat (then Premier and Attorney-General of Ontario) presiding. The chief engineer was James Ross, and William Mackenzie (of Kirkfield) did some bridge and building work. (They both started their railway construction careers on this line, Ross later a prominent contractor with the CPR, and of course Mackenzie the later co-founder of the Canadian Northern Railway empire.) The first 33 miles to Kinmount were reached in 1876 with several significant engineering works, including a trestle across McLaren’s Creek and a Howe Truss trestle (replaced by a plate girder bridge in 1893, then converted to a swing-bridge in 1906) across the Fenelon River. The only actual settlement scheme was some 300 Iceland- er immigrants who were good workers, but spent a miserable 1874 winter with dysentery, and then moved on to Manitoba. (They are commemorated by a cairn at the Kinmount station.) After a major engineering challenge with a huge sink- hole at Kendricks Creek three miles north of Kinmount, the line reached and terminated at Haliburton in late 1878. Like so many of its pioneer contemporaries, it was not a viable line for very long. It was acquired by the Midland Railway in 1882, then in turn by the Grand Trunk Railway in 1893, and by the CNR in 1923. Stations were Cameron (f )[flag stop], Halls (f), Fenelon Falls, Fells (f), Burnt River, Watson’s Siding (f), Kinmount, Howland (formerly Kin- mount) Jct., Gelert, Lochlin (f), Dysart (f), Donald (f), Gould (f) and Haliburton. Regular passenger service ceased in 1960, regular freight service lasted until 1972, and then “as required” until 1978. The CNR abandoned its Haliburton branch in 1981. The Irondale, Bancroft & Ottawa Railway (I, B&O) Originally the Toronto & Nipissing Eastern Extension Ry, became the IB&O in 1884, acquired the Miles Branch Tramway (1880) to Furnace Falls in 1886, opened to Irondale 1887, to Wilberforce 1893, to Baptiste 1897, to Mud Creek 1898, acquired by Mackenzie, Mann & Co. 1909, reached Bancroft (going no further) and leased by the Central Ontario Ry in 1910, acquired by the Canadian Northern Ry (CNoR) 1911, eked out a skimpy iron ore and timber traffic existence and was abandoned March 31, 1960. (Its starting point was at the Victoria Ry turntable at Howland Jct.)

(Please see overleaf for information about stations on the line, especially Kinmount) 2

Kinmount Station

GENERAL BACKGROUND (please see overleaf for information about the Victoria Railway) The second half of the 19 th century saw the rapid development of a railway network across southern Ontario. This development was promoted by the construction of two trunk railways, the Grand Trunk (GTR) and the Great Western (GWR) Railways. Civic and developer interests combined to initiate a great number of pioneering lines to connect with these major trunk railways and with each other. Typically these pioneering railways designed their own stations and had local craftsmen construct them all along the line according to a basic template, usually only varying the length of the building according to the traffic needs of each community. The Victoria Railway initially had an agreement to share its Lindsay station with the Midland Railway. Major stops along the line were Fenelon Falls, Burnt River, Kinmount, Gelert and Haliburton. By the end of the 19 th century, the GTR had emerged as the dominant railway in southern Ontario, having absorbed the GWR in 1882, and among others, the Midland Railway (subsequently the intermediate owner of the Victoria Railway), in 1893. GENERAL STATION BACKGROUND Today’s Kinmount station is a Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) station built in 1901 as part of a GTR Ontario-wide station replacement program between 1900 and 1914. (The 1907 GTR Buildings Inventory describes it as “rebuilt”, but it is of a standard and once abundant GTR country station design.) The common reasons for station replacement were one or more of three of (a.) dilapidation (most early stations were built as “temporary” wooden structures, (b.) track realignment/amalgamation (prompted by the frenzy of railway mergers in the late 1800s), (c.) community growth (necessitating more station space). Incidental additional reasons were the need (d.) to provide for station agent accommodation (usually on a second floor, but sometimes by extension on the main floor, as in the case of Gelert), (e.) to add telegrapher’s bays for better operating efficiency, and (f.) to replace losses by fire. THE KINMOUNT STATION It is not known whether the Victoria Railway had a “standard” station pattern, but the distinctive Gelert station that survived to the end of passenger service and the first Haliburton station that was also “rebuilt” in 1901, provide a possible clue. No picture of the first Kinmount station has surfaced, there is no known record of the original Burnt River station, and the present Fenelon Falls station is of Midland Railway design built in 1882 to replace the first station lost by fire, again with no known surviving record of its design. All early country “agency” stations (as opposed to flagstops that were usually simple shelters where one flagged down an approaching train or had to ask the conductor to stop the train to set one off, also sometimes combined with a section foreman’s house) typically consisted of three main areas: a waiting room (larger communities may have had a separate ladies’ waiting room), the station agent’s office that came to include the telegrapher’s bay, and a baggage room (In the railway’s heyday, passengers often travelled with many suitcases and steamer trunks). Freight for the community would usually be handled by a separate freight shed (sometimes the demoted earlier station). In the case of Kinmount, the waiting room was at the southerly end of the building, the agent’s office in the middle, and the baggage room to the north. Kinmount’s freight shed (noted by the GTR as of the same dimension as the station [22 ft by 44 ft]) was a little to the south of the station on the west side. At some point, Kinmount’s baggage room was lengthened, which could have been as a result of the need for more baggage space, or in order to dispense with the separate freight shed if business was contracting (usually in the Great Depression period). Some- time in the late 1960s the jigger shed and oil house at the sawmill switch south of the station were abandoned and the former waiting room became storage for the section gang and their (motorized) inspection vehicle. When the station was fully retired, its foundation was raised and the waiting room restored to its original appearance. Regular passenger service ceased in 1960, regular freight service lasted until 1972, and then “as required” until 1978. A washout just north of Kinmount in 1978 and the burnt-out trestle over McLaren’s Creek in 1981 sealed the fate of CNR’s Haliburton branch which was abandoned after the usual hearings, including a proposal for a tourist line. The preserved station serves as a tourist information office and the home of the Kinmount Model Railway & Museum who have modelled and put on public display the Kinmount-Haliburton section of the line in 1:87 scale. Sources and further reading: Brown, Ron, Ghost Railways of Ontario (Vol I), Broadview Press, Peterborough, Ont. 1994 Grand Trunk Railway Buildings & Bridges Inventory 1907 Hansen, Keith: Last Trains Out of Lindsay , Sandy Flats Publications, Roseneath, Ont. 1997 Heels, Charles H.: Railroad Recollections , Museum Restoration Service, Bloomfield, Ont. 1980 Wilkins, Taylor: Haliburton by Rail and the I. B. & O. , self-published, Haliburton, Ont. 1992 Willmot, Elizabeth A.: Faces and Places Along the Railway , Gage Publishing Ltd., Toronto, Ont. 1979. Wilson, Ian: Steam Memories of Lindsay , Canadian Branchline Miniatures, Orillia, Ont. 2010