CHRONICLES of CANADA Ledited by George M
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&X IIBM5 Universal Dinderv Ltd. BOOKBINDING - GOLD lETTERING Edmonton, Alberta ( 1 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/chroniclesofcana32wron CHRONICLES OF CANADA lEdited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton lln thirty-two volumes 32 THE RAILWAY BUILDERS BY OSCAR D. SKELTON I Part IX I National Highways i- j ‘/jl b I , '-i B«H ajiixa' yAw.'rmjT aiix ‘THE SURVEYOR, OFTEN AN EXPLORER AS WELL, STRIKING OUT INTO THE WILDERNESS IN SEARCH OF MOUNTAIN PASS OR LOWER GRADE’ From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys THE RAILWAY BUILDERS A Chronicle of Overland Highways BY OSCAR D. SKELTON TORONTO GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY 1922 Copyright in all Countries subscribing to the Berne Convention ir.". — the V“ fcS-T CONTENTS c./o Page I. THE COMING OF THE RAILWAY . I II. EARLY TRAVEL IN CANADA 13 III. THE CALL FOR THE RAILWAY . 27 IV. THE CANADIAN BEGINNINGS 36 V. THE GRAND TRUNK ERA . S2 VI. THE INTERCOLONIAL .... 93 VII. THE CANADIAN PACIFIC-BEGINNINGS 109 VIII. BUILDING THE CANADIAN PACIFIC 131 IX. THE ERA OF AMALGAMATION 169 X. THE CANADIAN NORTHERN iSl XI. THE EXPANSION OF THE GRAND TRUNK 196 XII. SUNDRY DEVELOPMENTS . 220 XIII. SOME GENERAL QUESTIONS 240 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE . 248 INDEX 249 r" o 0 Od ILLUSTRATIONS ‘THE SURVEYOR, OFTEN AN EXPLORER I AS WELL, STRIKING OUT INTO THE tt WILDERNESS IN SEARCH OF MOUN- ’ TAIN PASS OR LOWER GRADE . Frontispiece From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys. THE FIRST RAILWAY ENGINE IN CANADA, ; CHAMPLAIN AND ST LAWRENCE ^ 1 RAILROAD, 1837 . , . Facing page From a print in the ChSteau de Ramezay. RAILROADS AND LOTTERIES . 48 i „ L An Early Canadian Prospectus. I SIR FRANCIS HINCKS . „ 66 ' From a portrait in the Dominion Archives. RAILWAYS OF BRITISH NORTH AMERICA, I 1860 (Map) I ,,92 SIR GEORGE SIMPSON . „ no From a print in the ohn Ross Robertson Collec- ( J I tion, Toronto Public Library. SIR SANDFORD FLEMING . ,,114 j From a photograph by Topley. FLEMING ROUTE AND THE TRANS- CONTINENTALS (Map) , . „ iiS viii THE RAILWAY BUILDERS RAILWAYS OF CANADA, 1880 (Map) . Facing page 13 LORD STRATHCONA . „ 13 From a photograph by Lafayette, London. LORD MOUNT STEPHEN . „ 14 From a photograph by Wood and Henry, Duff- town. By courtesy of Sir William Van Horne, SIR WILLIAM CORNELIUS VAN HORNE . » 14 From a photograph by Notman. RAILWAYS OF CANADA, 1896 (Map) „ 18 CANADIAN NORTHERN RAILWAY, 1914 (Map) » 19 CHARLES MELVILLE HAYS „ 2C From a photograph by Notman. GRAND TRUNK SYSTEM, 1914 (Map) . „ 21 CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY, 1914 (Map) . GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY, 1914 (Map) . RAILWAYS OF CANADA, 1914 (Map) . CHAPTER 1 THE COMING OF THE RAILWAY i)N the morning of October 6, 1829, there be- jan at Rainhill, in England, a contest without parallel in either sport or industry. There ^ere four entries : . Braithwaite and Ericsson’s Novelty, Timothy Hackworth’s Sans-pareil. Stephenson and Booth’s Rocket, Burstall’s Perseverance, these were neither race-horses nor stage paches, but rival types of the newly invented team locomotive. To win the £500 prize ffered, the successful engine, if weighing six Ibns, must be able to draw a load of twenty pns at ten miles an hour, and to cover at bast seventy miles a day. Little wonder pat an eminent Liverpool merchant declared hat only a parcel of charlatans could have jevised such a test, and wagered that if a )comotive ever went ten miles an hour, he R.B. A ! THE RAILWAY BUILDERS would eat a stewed engine-wheel for brea fast The contest had come about as the on solution of a deadlock between the stubbo: directors of the Liverpool and Manchestj Railway, or tramway, then under constr tion, and their still more stubborn engine one George Stephenson. The railway nearly completed, and the essential questi of the motive power to be used had not been decided. The most conservative au orities thought it best to stick to the horsj others favoured the use of stationary stea: engines, placed every mile or two along route, and hauling the cars from one stati to the next by long ropes ; Stephenson, w: a few backers, urged a trial of the locomoti True, on the Stockton and Darlington R way, the first successful public line ever bu opened four years before, a Travelling Engi: built by the same dogged engineer, had hau 1 a train of some forty light carriages nea nine miles in sixty-five minutes, and had e\ beaten a stage-coach, running on the highw alongside, by a hundred yards in the twe miles from Darlington to Stockton. But e^ here the locomotive was only used to h freight still i ; passengers were carried in THE COMING OF THE RAILWAY 3 1 !;tage-coaches, which were mounted on special wheels to fit the rails, and were drawn by 1 lorses. The best practical engineers in Eng- I ^nd, when called into consultation, inspected t<lhe Stockton road, and then advised the per- ij)lexed directors to instal twenty-one station- e Iry engines along the thirty-one miles of ^ Irack, rather than to experiment with the i(kew Travelling Engine. I * What can be more palpably absurd and I tjidiculous,* the Quarterly Review had declared S'n 1825, * than the prospect held out of loco- nljnotives travelling twice as fast as stage- tl loaches ! We should as soon expect the i||ieople of Woolwich to suffer themselves to lie fired off upon one of Congreve’s ricochet i^jockets as trust themselves to the, mercy of jjuch a machine, going at such a rate.’ And line Quarterly was not alone in its scepticism, iflihe directors of the new railway had found 1 freat difficulty in obtaining a charter from 3i|arliament—a difficulty registered in a bill vbr parliamentary costs reaching £27,000, or wjver $4000 a mile. Canal proprietors and eljoll-road companies had declaimed against IV ^e attack on vested rights. Country squires iii^ad spluttered over the damage to fox covers. < lorses could not plough in neighbouring fields. : THE RAILWAY BUILDERS Widows* strawberry -beds would be ruine What would become of coachmen and coac builders and horse-dealers ? ‘ Or suppose cow were to stray upon the line ; would n that be a very awkward circumstance S' queried a committee member, only to gi Stephenson an opening for the classic rep in his slow Northumbrian speech verra awkward for the coo.* And not o would the locomotive as it shot along do su it varied damage ; in truth, would not go all ; the wheels, declared eminent exper would not grip on the smooth rails, or else t| engines would prove top-heavy. To decide the matter, the directors h offered the prize which brought together t Noveltyy the Sans-pareily the Rockety and t JitI PerseverancGy engines which would look almc H[81 as strange to a modern crowd as they did the thousands of spectators drawn up alo Sid the track on that momentous morning. T ^|f contest was soon decided. The Noveltyy ingenious engine but not substantially bul>j|i( broke down twice. The Sans-pareil prov wasteful of coal and also met with an accide The PerseverancBy for all its efforts, could no better than five or six miles an ho The Rocket alone met all requirements. Ir THE IRON ROAD ^ejftventy-mile run it averaged fifteen miles an [our and reached a maximum of twenty-nine, se '’ears afterwards, when scrapped to a colliery, n he veteran engine was still able, in an emer- ency, to make four miles in four and a half linutes. ‘ Truly,’ declared Cropper, one of he directors who had stood out for the station- |ry engine and the miles of rope, ‘ now has Jeorge Stephenson at last delivered himself.’ Stephenson had the good fortune, he had efjjhrned it indeed, to put the top brick on the tjpll, and he alone lives in popular memory. iut the railway, like most other great inven- hUons, came about by the toil of hundreds of fnown and unknown workers, each adding his jttle or great advance, until at last some jenius or some plodder, standing on their jailures, could reach success. Both the char- loj|cteristic features of the modern railway, T|he iron road and the steam motive power, jleveloped gradually as necessity urged and , uijroping experiment permitted. )V| The iron road came first. When men be- et Ian to mine coal in the north of England, the 1 ieed clear l grew of better highways to bear the oiieavy cart-loads to market or riverside. About [n 630 one Master Beaumont laid down broad 6 THE RAILWAY BUILDERS wooden rails near Newcastle, on which single horse could haul fifty or sixty bushels coal. The new device spread rapidly throu; the whole Tyneside coal-field. A centu: later it became the custom to nail thin stri of wrought iron to the wooden rails, and aboi 1767 cast-iron rails were first used. Carr, Sheffield colliery manager, invented a flang rail, while Jessop, another colliery enginee took the other line by using flat rails bi flanged cart-wheels. The outburst of can building in the last quarter of the eighteenl century overshadowed for a time the growl of the iron road, but it soon became clear th< the ‘ tramway ^ was necessary to supplemen if not to complete, the canal. In 1801 the fir public line, the Surrey Iron Railway, w; chartered, but it was not until 1825 that tl success of the Stockton and Darlington Ra: way proved that the iron way could be ma< as useful to the general shipping public as the colliery owner.