An alternate history of rails in the Ottawa Valley

There is no shortage of lamentations online about the state of railways in the Ottawa Valley and loss of much-loved rail lines. The other day, I found myself in Bells Corners with a few minutes to spare, so I sat trackside, hoping to catch CN 589 on its way back from Arnprior. The train never showed, but I began to think of some documents I read years ago from the Canadian Transportation Agency about the Renfrew Spur, a long stretch of track, between the former Nepean Junction and Arnprior, that would be long gone by now if CN had its way. Strangely enough, you can thank the Canadian Pacific Railway (okay, CPKC if you want to get technical) for the survival of the former Renfrew Subdivision.

Long story short, in 1987, CN applied to discontinue service on what was then known as the Renfrew Subdivision because the railway claimed it lost more than $328,000 per year on the line. The reasons were pretty obvious. Its one main customer was Nylene Canada (formerly BASF), which required weekly service, mostly one to three tank cars of caprolactum from Texas. CN, in its filings to the CTA, said there weren't enough customers on the line to justify continued service. In 1987, there were less than 100 car movements on the line. Hardly worth the price of maintaining the tracks for a large railway.

Read the specific details of this line's status from my earlier post.

At the time, the Teamsters Union claimed that Sullivan's Lumber in Carp (later Rona) and a flour mill both wanted rail service, but nothing seemed to come of the union's claims.

Instead, there were discussions with both CN and CP over how Nylene Canada would continue to get rail service in a way that didn't cost a railway money. When you consider that the Renfrew trackage now runs roughly 50 kilometres from what was once Nepean Junction (where the Beachburg Sub once veered northwest toward Fitzroy Harbour and beyond) out to the Nylene plant, you understand that this is a lot of infrastructure to maintain for one eastern and western movement a week. 

At some point in these proceedings, it was decided that Nylene must have rail service, as the cost of shipping caprolactum by truck wasn't worth it for the company, which remains a major employer in Arnprior to this day. So the issue was how would the plant get served and which railway would provide the service in a way that was workable for everyone involved?

In 1987, Arnprior had both the Renfrew Subdivision and CP's Chalk River Subdivision running through the town. At the time, neither line could be described as a critical stretch of track, but CP did still use its Chalk River Sub for through freight, even if there was little to no trackside business. Also, Via Rail used the Chalk River Sub, as well as the CP Carleton Place Sub, for the Canadian, which once ran through Ottawa all the way to Montreal.

We all know how the story ends. We don't know what happened during this time between the government and the two railways, but we know the discussions over rail service to the Arnprior plant ended with the decision that CN would continue to serve the plant, instead of CP. But here's the question that I find intriguing. What if it was decided that CP would serve Nylene Canada?

If the Canadian Transportation Agency's discussions about rail service to Nylene Canada resulted in CP being the railway to provide the service, would there have been an Arnpior Turn originating in Smiths Falls? It might have happened.
 

Here are the possible scenarios that could have resulted from this decision, including my take on how likely they would be in a parallel universe.

1. CP would have retained part of the Chalk River Subdivision. (LIKELY) I think this could have been a likely scenario. Would the track have been owned by CP or would the land have been sold to local governments and the rails sold to Nylene? Possibly over time. But what makes this scenario less likely is the fact that, at the time the decision was made in 1987, the Chalk River Subdivision still hosted daily through freights as well as the Canadian. That's a far different situation than what CN was facing with the Renfrew Subdivision, which essentially hosted nothing but a weekly freight out to Arnprior and back. Possibly the Chalk River track would have remained a CP concern. 

2. CP would have retained the entire Chalk River Subdivision. (FAIRLY UNLIKELY) The other fascinating question would be if this weekly service, as mandated by the CTA, have caused CP to rethink its plans to abandon the Chalk River Sub in 2010-11? I ask this because possibly the weekly Arnprior service would have ensured that the subdivision between Smiths Falls and Arnprior remained in place. If that was the case, possibly Via Rail could have come in to maintain the remainder of the track to ensure the Canadian had its connection to Ottawa and beyond. And if that scenario seems possible, would it be a stretch for CP to keep running through freights on this line as a guest on a Via line? Or would the Ottawa Valley Railway still be involved on the sub? There are a lot of factors to consider here, but I think it might have happened.

The issue working against this possibility is that Via Rail did not have multiple trains using this line. Think about Via Rail's ownership of the old CN Smiths Falls Sub and the old CP Brockville Sub. These two lines see many movements a day, which makes sense for Via Rail to own and maintain them. The Chalk River Sub is not in the same league as these other lines. I think the entire track would likely not have made it.

3. CP would have retained the Carleton Place Subdivision. (UNLIKELY) This is where the alternate history gets a little murkier. Remember that Via Rail used the Carleton Place Sub and the Chalk River Sub as its route for the Canadian up until 1990. If CP had been forced to provide service to Arnprior, which would have necessitated a major stretch of the Chalk River Sub to be saved, would it mean that the Carleton Place Sub would have been saved? I don't think it would have saved this piece of track, which is but a memory now.

The reason I think this line was doomed no matter what was because it was essentially in the same situation as CN's Renfrew Subdivision, with no freight activity. In its final days, it was hosting Via Rail and nothing else. The discontinuance documents show the line had two car loads in and out in 1986 and nothing else afterward. This document from 1988 shows that CP was essentially losing anywhere from $250,000 to nearly $500,000 a year on this stretch of track, even though Via and officials from Carleton Place wanted the line kept in place. Notice from the document that the former Region of Ottawa-Carleton did not take a position on the rail line, but asked for the right of first refusal to buy the land.

My guess is that the Canadian, if it still had access to the Chalk River Sub and was running through to Montreal, would have gone to Smiths Falls and switched onto the old CN Smiths Falls Sub, where it could then continue on its way to Ottawa and then Montreal. It's fascinating to consider that train stopping at Fallowfield Station.

Is the platform at Fallowfield long enough for the Canadian? It's interesting to consider.

 

4. CN would have torn up the Renfrew Subdivision (SURE THING) There's no doubt at all that the Renfrew Sub would have been a goner had the CTA decision on rail service to Arnprior been different. Most likely, the land would have either been converted to a trail or sold off in parts of the city where it could be developed, like in Kanata. As it stands today, the line is still in place, with a 10 mph speed limit, giving you an idea of the condition of the rails. 

The final factor to consider in this alternate history is the fact that CPKC now has a transcontinental link across Canada re-established. Given that CP can run trains all the way out to port in New Brunswick, possibly there could have been consideration to keeping the Chalk River Sub in place or at least re-establishing a connection between Chalk River and Arnprior, if that part of the line saw a discontinuance even with the CP service to Nylene.

 

Of course, in the early 1990s, no one could have foreseen CP relinquishing its cross-Canada network only to reacquire it years later, but it's fascinating to think what might be possible if CP had been mandated to serving Nylene in Arnprior.

Westboro's forgotten train station

Walk through Westboro today and you’d be hard pressed to see the vestiges of its grittier past. Today, the trendy suburb west of Ottawa’s core is home to expensive homes, trendy shops and all sorts of infill development.

But when you read about its past, you begin to see how the railway played a significant role in its development. For our purposes, we’re going to focus on the village’s efforts to secure a railway station and look at what the railway did for the area.

But first, a bit of history. Westboro was not originally a part of Ottawa. It was part of the old Nepean Township (which, itself, eventually became the City of Nepean until it became part of the amalgamated City of Ottawa in 2000). Westboro began as a development scheme for people who wanted to branch out of the old City of Ottawa, which in the late 1800s, had its limits around Western Avenue. Westboro developed as a village and soon grew to become the administrative centre of the old Nepean Township. (That arrangement ended when Westboro was annexed by the City of Ottawa in 1949). Even the famous Nepean bell, which became the city’s logo, was originally stationed in Westboro (that bell now hangs on a fire hall in Bells Corners, which served as Nepean’s seat for a while).

Like any emerging village, Westboro needed transportation links to grow. It was originally connected to Ottawa via what became Richmond Road. That road is still the neighbourhood’s main street, but back then, you either used this road or used the Ottawa Electric Railway Company to get anywhere. The OER had tracks to Britannia. The line passed through Westboro along what is now the Byron Linear Park, running next to Byron Avenue.

For residents of the village who wanted to travel outside of the area, they were forced to make the trek to Ottawa’s old Union Station downtown, or to the old Broad Street station on the Lebreton Flats if they wanted to go anywhere. In 1919, they had the additional choice of using the Ottawa West station, in the Bayview area. But again, the lion’s share of the trains operated through the downtown station.

That might not seem like a big deal now, but before cars, it was not easy to get around, especially on roads and tramlines that were often at the mercy of the area’s harsh winters and soggy springs. So, the village’s backers called for the Canadian Pacific Railway to build a station along the Carleton Place Subdivision, which passed by Westboro. An easy solution, right? Not quite.

Westboro’s first CPR station was nothing more than a concrete platform, located about 600 feet west of Parkdale Avenue, which placed it closer to Ottawa’s western fringes than it did to Westboro. This decision was heavily influenced by the City of Ottawa, according to multiple sources.

The village appealed the decision to the Board of Railway Commissioners and won. The result was that by 1921, a station was finally built at the end of Victoria Avenue* (today’s Roosevelt Avenue). The station had an agent, passenger, freight, express and telegraph service.

Looking for any evidence of this station today is useless. It once sat where a huge trench now serves as OC Transpo’s bus transitway road. That road, of course, will once again revert to rails as the Confederation Line is extended west to Moodie. Work has already begun.

Despite the new link with the CPR network, getting anywhere from Westboro was not an easy task. It was a stop for about three trains each way, including as a flag stop on certain days.

But the trains were not direct connections. Westbound trains ended at Chalk River, where passengers would then have to transfer if they wanted to get to Toronto. Eastbound trains through Westboro ended in Ottawa, which meant locals still had to go downtown if they wanted to take a train to Montreal or somewhere else east of Ottawa.

The station over the years also included some additional tracks, which served as sidings or spurs for the local delivery of coal, animal feed and other supplies for a stove maker (located closer to Hintonburg) and sawmill.

For much of its history, Westboro’s freight rail service was provided by a small steam locomotive switcher out of Ottawa West yard. By the early 1950s, the station was seeing less and less business and lost its agent. By 1958, the CPR closed the station, which was then demolished in 1960. The last passenger train to go through Westboro was the Canadian, which breezed through on July 30th, 1966. That portion of the Carleton Place sub was removed shortly afterward and replaced with a switch off the Beachburg Subdivision in Bells Corners. CPR then guided all incoming and outgoing traffic via trackage rights through Bells Junction.

At the time of its demolition, the CPR Westboro station was not likely seen as anything worth saving. It’s a shame it wasn’t saved, as it would today be a unique piece of history for one of Ottawa’s most celebrated communities.

And just for kicks, I found an old picture of the old CN Renfrew Subdivision over Island Park Drive on what is now the Queensway. Check out the church in the photo, which is still there today. I have been searching for this photo, from the City of Ottawa archives, for some time and finally found it recently. I was hoping to find more shots of the Westboro CP operations around its old station, but all I could find were aerial overhead shots that are in the city's mapping database.

* - One of the sources I read referred to today's Roosevelt Avenue as Victoria Avenue when the train station was built. But another source claimed the street was named River Road.

SOURCES

Kitchissippi Museum

http://kitchissippimuseum.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-westboro-cpr-station.html

Colin Churcher's Railways in Canada

https://churcher.crcml.org/circle/Westboro.htm

https://churcher.crcml.org/circle/Wreck%20Details/1951Westboro.html

Ottawa Rewind

https://ottawarewind.com/2014/11/30/remains-of-140-year-old-canadian-pacific-railway-on-ncc-parkway/

Wikipedia - Ottawa Electric Railway Company

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Electric_Railway

Wikipedia - Westboro

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro,_Ottawa

 

Almonte: A town proud of its rail heritage

This post is the first in a rail history series I intend to extend through 2017 as we celebrate Canada's 150th birthday.

It's been six years since Canadian Pacific trains have thundered through Almonte, Ontario, a picturesque town just southwest of Ottawa in Lanark County. The town, which is now known as a haven for tech entrepreneurs, has been a railway town since before Confederation. Having been settled in 1818, due to the Mississippi River rapids that powered several mills, Almonte was first served by the Brockville and Ottawa Railway. In 1864, the railway opened an extension between Almonte and Arnprior, which connected the Grand Trunk in Brockville with the timber concerns in the Ottawa Valley, all the way up to the Ottawa River at Sand Point.

Over the years, Almonte's numerous mills, many of them involved in textiles, were served by the B&O and its successors. That was because the B&O quickly ran into financial trouble when it extended its line to Arnprior. The Canada Central was given the rights to build rail further up the Ottawa Valley, which it did. By 1881, the Canada Central reached Mattawa, which would form an important part of the backbone for the Canadian Pacific transcontinental mainline. CP purchased the CCR in 1881, which essentially established railway service for Almonte for the next 120 plus years.

This shot, above, is one of the earliest photos I could find of the railway in Almonte. Amazingly, this scene would not change much over the next hundred plus years, as much of the town's 19th century buildings were preserved, This image, from Library and Archives Canada, is undated, but would likely date back to the early 1900s or the turn of the century. The only information listed on the photograph states that the train is passing a flour mill on the Mississippi River.

Unfortunately, Almonte's railway history is best known for a horrific crash that happened on Dec. 27, 1942. On that day, in bad weather, a troop train bringing soldiers from the Canadian West slammed into the back of a local, which was carrying passengers from various Ottawa Valley towns to Ottawa for the evening. The crash killed 30 people, all in the local. A number of factors were blamed for the crash, but the largest cause was that the railway had no official in Pakenham to stop the troop train, which was gaining on the local. If the troop train had been stopped for 20 minutes, the crash would have been prevented.

This shot, from the National Archives, shows the aftermath of the crash. There is a plaque near the site of the crash in Almonte, which honours the 39 people killed and remembers the bravery of local residents and soldiers in the troop train, who worked to help 150 people who were injured in the crash.

Almonte's rail history sadly no longer includes the old Canadian Pacific station. It's unfortunate that the station didn't get saved, given how much of the town's 1800s-era stone structures have been faithfully preserved.

However, you need only look at the rail bridge over the Mississippi River today to see what impact the railway had on this town.

This shot, above, is from the Canada Science and Technology Museum archives. I would say this shot is probably from the early to mid 1980s, given the prominence of the large multimark on two of the three units and the yellow reefer boxcar.

This shot, above, also gives you an idea of the importance of the rail line that went through Almonte. The Chalk River Subdivision was a strategic line for CP for years, as it gave the railway a connection between its northern main line in eastern Canada with its more southerly main line, which in Eastern Ontario is the Winchester Subdivision. Just like CN had with the Beachburg Subdivision, CP used the Chalk River Sub as its northern main line through the Ottawa Valley.

But, just like the Beachburg Sub, the Chalk River Sub was soon deemed too expensive to operate, since most of CP's traffic to Montreal was concentrated through its southern route through Toronto. This made the northern main line rails through the Ottawa Valley obsolete (see also the CP Prescott Subdivision).

In 1996, the Ottawa Valley Railway began operating on trackage between Sudbury and Smiths Falls after leasing the lines from CP. The arrangement meant that freight from the west still travelled over CP's northern route, as CP was a major source of carloads for OVR. That arrangement worked well for OVR until 2009, when CP stopped using this northern route for its eastbound freight, which cut the carloads for OVR from 4000 to 1000 (OVR, which is now a Genesee &Wyoming concern, continues to operate between Sudbury and Temiscaming, Quebec)

An interesting side note to this abandonment is that CFB Petawawa is no longer served by rail. At one point, the military base used both CP and CN (later the Ottawa Central) for delivery of some of its equipment. This made for some pretty interesting movements.

By the end of 2009, OVR's parent railway bailed out on operations in the Ottawa Valley and CP proceeded to start the process of abandoning the Chalk River Sub. Municipalities fought to save the line, none more so than Mississippi Mills, the municipality that includes Almonte. Those efforts failed, as is often the case, and all that is left of the Chalk River Sub now are memories and, in some spots, a recreational trail. This is what has been happening in Almonte, as efforts have been made to develop this section of the old rail line into a trail. Lanark County has leased the old rail line from CP and has recently begun the process to buy the old right-of-way. Meetings were held in January to update the public on how this trail will take shape.

1956 scene from Almonte's old railway station

On a personal note, I am happy to say that I was lucky enough to see trains roll through Almonte a few years ago. The sight of freights rumbling over the Mississippi River is one of the best moments you would have had as a railfan in Eastern Ontario.

Now, all you can do is relive the experience via YouTube. This is one of many railfanning videos you will find at the EasternOntarioTracks YouTube channel, which I highly recommend if you are looking for a nice variety of railway action in this part of the province.