Grand Trunk Railway

“ The new line, known as the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, is now practically complete and is already operating over the major portion of its road, there being a fine passenger and freight service between Ft. William, Ontario, and Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Its construction marks the most important development of the Grand Trunk, since the amalgamation with the Great Western Railway of Canada, and it is expected to make the Pioneer Railway of Canada one of the greatest forces in the development of the country, the uniting of East with West into one huge harmonious whole. ”

“ Not many new steam railroad companies are now needed even in the West. It must be confessed that the recently authorized extension of the Grand Trunk Railway into the heart of New England shows how persistent is the demand for new roads even in the East. But whoever may build, let them learn the lesson, so often forgotten, that honest management and conservative financing, to the end that solid credit be first established, has far more to do with facilitating development than non-interference by law. ”

“ The telephone is in almost everyone's home. So that with the pianola, the gramophone, and other means of diversion, the winter nights are not what they were to the people in the years of the nineteenth century.
In railroad facilities Canada, if anything, is fifty years ahead of her time, so well are they developed. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, from Monckton, New Brunswick to Winnipeg and thence to Prince Rupert, B.C., which was commenced in 1905, and finished in 1915, was leased on its completion to the Grand Trunk Railway Company for fifty years. ”

“ The Grand Trunk Railway is open to attack for many miles at different parts of its course, and in some places trains could be fired upon from American territory! Our reinforcements last winter were sent through New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in sleighs, along a route which for miles could be cut across at any time by the enemy from Maine, and it would be necessary, to make all safe, for us to follow the Metapodliac road, or to construct the intercolonial railway. ”

“ Above all he favoured the construction of railways, and to his energy and fearless, optimism are largely due the eventual success of the Grand Trunk railway, and the resolve to construct the Canadian Pacific. ”

“ Brassey was good enough to give me a position on the North Staffordshire Railway, and I remained upon his staff for seven years; the last two being spent upon his great contract for the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada. For a further seven years I remained in Canada, constructing railways for the Governments of the Lower Provinces, and I returned home, after an absence of nine years, in 1861. ”

“ Those who invested their money in the enterprise have had to be content with meagre returns financially, and a large consciousness of public service, if that was of comfort to them.
“It is well that the Canadian people should not forget the factors that have helped them along towards nationhood. The sixty-sixth anniversary of the Grand Trunk should be an occasion for a little thought as to the deserts of that fine old railroad system, an honorable patriotic corporation that has been the victim of one-half the railway legislation not only of the Federal House but of most of the Provinces.” ”

“ Every property holder has a direct interest at stake. If a liberal sum were to be subscribed to-morrow for investment in this important branch of enterprise, the direct benefit that would accrue to the real estate of the city would be at least double the amount invested.
The Western States look with deep interest to the Grand Trunk Railway, and are hopeful that it may prove a great benefit to them in enabling producers to reach the markets of European consumers at a cheap rate for carriage. Unquestionably great benefits will grow out of the opening up of the great thoroughfare. ”

“ The Grand Trunk of 1914 was a much greater factor in the life of Canada than the Grand Trunk of 1894; it had become nation-wide in its interests, and had shaken off the unfortunate traditions of its earlier stagnant {219} days. Difficult tasks still faced it: the building up of the traffic of the far north would demand ceaseless effort, and when the wheel of time should bring round slackened business once more, it would call for all its powers to make ends meet in face of rising wages, taxes, outlays of every kind. ”

“ The traveller and shipper had less to complain of than the shareholder. The service of the road had been greatly increased. The mileage was large in proportion to population. Rates were low. True, it was a rare event for a Grand Trunk train to arrive on time, but it usually arrived.
For these various ills corresponding remedies were sought in turn. Drastic capital reorganization was discussed, but nothing was done. Commercial prosperity could not be revived by the efforts of a single railway. Competition was met by agreement after agreement, 'gentleman's' and otherwise, but in vain. ”

“ It seems that to the south from Genesee street there was a steep up-grade, so that a train of loaded cars must, in order to ascend the same, cross the street at a higher rate of speed than would, considering the situation of the crossing, be prudent to the safety of passers on the street, without warning of the train's approach. A train coming from the north could not be seen at all by those traveling on the street in the direction Grant was driving, until the traveler was within 40 feet of the track, and the train within from 150 to 175 feet of the center of the street ”

“ In Ontario, a branch from Toronto to Sudbury made the Canadian Pacific independent of the Grand Trunk's North Bay link, an extension from Guelph to Goderich tapped a fertile country, a line from Port M'Nicoll on Georgian Bay to Bethany near Peterborough gave a short through route for grain, a lake shore route eastward from Toronto provided access to the towns which the Grand Trunk, in its promoters' concern for through traffic or in its contractors' desire for low land charges, had side-tracked, while stock purchase and later a lease of the Kingston and Pembroke gave entrance into Kingston. ”

“ Line after line had been absorbed, extension after extension had been built. New life seemed to have been injected into the old system. Holders of even ordinary shares began to dream of dividends.
The activity was brief and prosperity briefer. Only in the golden days from 1881 to 1883, when the West was enjoying its first 'boom' and railway construction was at its height, did the policy of expansion justify itself from the shareholder's point of view. The year 1883 saw the high-water mark of prosperity for the Grand Trunk ”

“ Accordingly the government took power to operate the road from Winnipeg to Moncton, and to expropriate the company's branch from Superior to Fort William, pending further negotiations.
The great Canadian railway companies are much more than railways. The Grand Trunk system, in its new expansion, branched into every neighbouring field which could be made to increase the traffic. Fleets of steamers, on the Pacific coast, on the Great Lakes, and on the New England route, filled in gaps in its lines. Modern car-ferries crossed Lake Ontario and Lake Michigan, as well as the river Detroit. ”

“ Various industries along the line, from coal companies to flour mills, were helped forward for years. A loyal staff was built up, and by grace of efficiency the company pulled through until the lean days of the early nineties were over.
During this decade of extraordinary activity the Grand Trunk had been neither content nor passive. Offended by the incursions into its best paying territory, it fought its younger rival in parliament and on the stock exchange, {179} but with no lasting success in either quarter. It was more successful in its own constructive policy of expansion. ”

“ The amalgamated road would be the most comprehensive railway system in the world, comprising 1112 miles, stretching from Portland and eventually from Halifax (by both the northern and the southern route) to Lake Huron. The whole future traffic between west and east must therefore pass over the Grand Trunk, as both geographical conditions and legislative enactment prevented it from injurious competition. ”

“ The population of the Dominion is estimated roughly at 5,000,000, so that this mileage gives something over two miles of railway for every thousand inhabitants, a greater railway mileage system per head of population than, perhaps, is possessed by any other country in the world.
The old Grand Trunk proprietors feel that their early pioneer services to Canada, and their heavy sacrifices, have rather been ignored in competition, than recognized, by the Canadian Pacific not being an extension of the Grand Trunk system. ”

“ The railway era set in. The Railroad Guarantee Act, authorizing Government grants to private companies undertaking the construction of railways, having been passed in 1849, the public began to hear of various railway projects of greater or lesser importance. The first great enterprise of this sort with which Mr. Gzowski connected himself was the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad Company, from Montreal to Island Pond, which has since been amalgamated with the Grand Trunk. Mr. ”

“ This ruinous diversion of freight seems to have been dependent upon the existence of active competition at Detroit and ceased when the Grand Trunk came to an agreement with the American lines. But there can be no doubt that wherever these cross lines exist there is a strong tendency toward diversion. In the recent hearings of the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce on railway rate regulation, a railroad witness again describes the operation:
Mr. ”

“ During its sixty-six years of history it has continued adding to its system, and to-day when the railroads of the entire continent are laboring under immense handicaps, congestion, lack of fuel and labor, expense and scarcity of materials, the “old Grand Trunk” is holding up its end, and winning praise for its success. That recognition, so far as the people of Canada are concerned, does not seem to be commensurate with the deserts of the company. ”

“ Thus, in the notable instance of trunk line competition for the beef traffic some twenty years ago, the Grand Trunk, although much more roundabout, besides being handicapped in other ways, by securing all the business, could afford to make rates impossible under other circumstances.
Whether the business in question is natural or normal to a road, or is an extra, diverted from other more direct lines, is still another factor of importance affecting ability to compete successfully for any given traffic. ”

“ There is the unfathomable fascination of romance connected with the construction of great railways, though little is known of the beginning and the growth of the great trunk roads of the world; of the heavy tax which their construction imposed upon the ingenuity, skill and resource of their builders. Speeding along swiftly in a luxurious Pullman car over a road-bed as smooth as an asphalt pavement conveys no impression of the perils and dangers faced or of the infinite labour expended in the making of that steel highway. ”

“ In the autumn of 1913 when the Stratford, Ont., yard limits were extended and reorganized to conform to the requirements of the new “Grand Trunk” station, opened in December of that year, the old eastend ducat, (dovecote-do’ecot) , in which young Edison is said to have served a part of his apprenticeship as an operator, was torn down to make way for a modern signal tower.
Every railroad telegrapher is said to experience once, sooner or later during his career, being temporarily petrified with alarm on finding he has ordered two trains to pass “head on” or from the rear on a single track. ”

“ The establishment of five great railroads extending continuously from the Atlantic seaboard to Chicago and the West was perhaps the most remarkable economic development of the ten or fifteen years succeeding the war. By 1875 these five great trunk lines, the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, the Erie, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Grand Trunk, had connected their scattered units and established complete through systems. ”

“ They weigh 135 tons, and develop about 2000 horse-power, which enables them to haul a 1000-ton train up the heavy approach grades at a minimum speed of 10 miles per hour. Moreover, since electricity was adopted, the tunnel has been kept free from the dense clouds of smoke and steam which originally converted the tube into a veritable inferno, and, what is far more important from the railway company’s point of view, the electrical system is able to meet three times the volume of traffic that exists to-day, so that there is ample provision for the future. ”

“ On shot the locomotive, like an arrow from the bow, the men throwing over the ties until the train was well nigh unloaded, when just as they were close to the curve by which the train arrives at the station, they saw the dreaded cars strike a tie, or something equally of service, and with a desperate plunge rush down the embankment, some fifteen feet, to the little valley, and creek below. ”

“ Here is the prospectus in dear uncle's writing. He shows how simple and inexpensive it would be to build a railway across the Dartmoor, without a single viaduct, tunnel, embankment, or cutting. It was his intention to make Highfield Station a terminus, as he could not see his way to surmount the steep drop into the valley without going to considerable expense. Now you can understand why it is no longer my intention to occupy the poorly paid position of station-master. I aim at higher things. I mean to be a railway magnate. ”