The North Grey Railway

The Northern's eventual response to Grey County's clamour for railway service was the sponsorship in 1871 of the North Grey Railway which, along with the Toronto & Muskoka Junction Railway (see below) was leased back to the Northern as the Northern Extension Railway Company. (The Northern Extension Railway was absorbed back into the Northern in 1875.) The North Grey Railway was incorporated to build from Collingwood to Owen Sound, and the 22 miles from Collingwood to Meaford were speedily completed in 1872. Laidlaw's Toronto, Grey & Bruce Railway however arrived in Owen Sound in 1873 and effectively satisfied Grey County's need for railway service. The section from Meaford to Owen Sound never was completed. For more detail on the North Grey Railway, please click here.

The Toronto, Simcoe & Muskoka Jct. Railway

In the meantime, by 1869, some prominent Toronto families but also some Simcoe County business and civic interests were agitating for an extension of the Northern Railway from the end of its line at Barrie to Orillia. That pressure resulted in sponsorship by the Northern and incorporation in late 1869 of the Toronto, Simcoe & Muskoka Junction Railway to build from Barrie to Orillia and beyond to a terminal on Lake Muskoka. 
The line to Orillia was completed in 1872, crossed the Narrows between Lakes Simcoe and Couchiching at Atherley, reached Washago in 1873, Severn in 1874, Gravenhurst in late 1875 and was at Muskoka Wharf in 1876 to open up the Muskokas to a new era of holiday resorts for the well-to-do. (Corporately, the Toronto, Simcoe & Muskoka Jct. Railway and the North Grey Railway were combined into the Northern Extension Railway, leased back to the Northern and finally absorbed into the Northern in 1875.)

The North Simcoe Railway and the Flos Tramway

The North Simcoe Railway had been incorporated in 1874 by Toronto business interests "from a point on the Northern Railway" (Colwell) to Penetanguishene, was leased to the Northern and built and opened in 1878, just before the Northern & North Western merger (see below). Its principal target was the rich timber stands in Flos Township, resulting in the incorporation and opening of the Flos Tramway in 1880. This spur ran from Elmvale to Hillsdale, south of Orr Lake, and was acquired by the Northern & North Western Railways (see below) in 1882. Lumbering operations are believed to have ceased in the 1890s, but the track was not lifted until 1917, a portion of it as late as 1927. The North Simcoe Railway provided a transportation artery to Penetang which the Grand Trunk was later (in 1911) to enhance with a connection from just north of Elmvale at Birch to Midland via Wyebridge.

The Northern & North Western Railways

All this activity had not escaped the business community of Hamilton, which in 1872 had chartered the Hamilton & North Western Railway to build through Simcoe County to connect with the forthcoming transcontinental railway. The challenge from the Hamilton & North Western proved to be the major event of the 1870s for the Northern. What began as competition for traffic in Simcoe County crystalized in and then focused on a connection to the forthcoming transcontinental railway.

The Northern already had a springboard to the North with its Toronto, Simcoe & Muskoka Junction Railway, but the initial issue was the prospective competition for business in Simcoe County. The Northern viewed this prospective inroad into its preserve with great concern, and endeavoured to stave it off with its counterproposal of the South Simcoe Junction Railway, a line projected to branch off at King City in York County, and to serve the western portion of Simcoe County by way of Beeton, Alliston, Angus and Penetanguishene. Meanwhile a Simcoe County delegation was putting pressure on the Hamilton & North Western to build a branch from Beeton to Collingwood to serve the western part of Simcoe County. This was an expression of another grievance against the Northern, whereby the westerly part of Simcoe County had for two decades had a long trek to the railway for mail and transportation. The outcome was that Simcoe County, chronically fed up with the Northern monopoly and still smarting from such injuries as the Barrie Switch, voted its bonuses to the Hamilton railway. The South Simcoe Junction Railway was never built, although its proposed northern portion more or less planned the same route to Penetanguishene as the one followed by the subsequent North Simcoe Railway (see above). 

Behind the skirmishes for Simcoe County's business, the reality of the transcontinental railway hovered in the wings. It was after all the founding purpose of the Hamilton & North Western Railway and an object that the Northern could not afford not to be part of, now that a move was being made to have a connection from southern Ontario become a reality.

In taking stock of themselves, the two railways were both strapped for capital with the adverse financial climate of the 1870s;  and revenue to make the railways pay was an ongoing struggle. In summary, for the Hamilton & North Western, getting into Simcoe County had been "touch-and-go", and maintaining a respectable financial profile had continued to be a challenge for the Northern. Moreover, it was clear that two competing railways slogging through the rugged and forbidding terrain of the Canadian Shield could not be justified and would likely not get the necessary Dominion or provincial support.

For the Northern, there were two additional  issues:

1. Its visionary driving force and manager Frederic Cumberland was in declining health by the late 1870s - the travails of the Northern had taken their toll.

2. The Northern was still on the Provincial Gauge, whereas the latterday Hamilton & North Western had been built to the Standard Gauge. The Grand Trunk had converted to the Standard Gauge by 1872, and the Midland Railway had followed by 1874, so it was only a matter of time for the Northern to be compelled to follow suit. The Northern knew full well that this impending necessity had been the downfall of the Buffalo & Lake Huron Railway, and was "the elephant in the room" for the substantial Great Western, let alone for the lesser Laidlaw narrow gauge lines. 

So the Hamilton & North Western reached Barrie in late 1877, and struggled to build its branch through Alliston, Lisle, Creemore and Duntroon to reach Collingwood in mid-1979 (not counting the construction train that squeaked in at the end of 1878 to satisfy the bonus requirement). For a few short months, Simcoe basked in its second railway, and then for Simcoe County, the bad news broke. 

The Northern and the Hamilton & North Western had merged under a joint management agreement to form the Northern & North Western Railways. As discussed above, the main reason for this merger was financial necessity arising from the ambition of both railways to make a connection at North Bay with the proposed transcontinental railway.

Arguably, the merger also gave impetus to the need for the Northern to convert from the 5'6" Provincial Gauge to the Standard Gauge, and this was completed on July 14, 1881.

Upon news of the merger, predictably, a storm of civic anger erupted in Simcoe County, but the inevitable had arrived and was not about to be undone. The anger was palpable in Collingwood, somewhat more restrained in Barrie/Allandale, and the rest of the County settled down into acceptance of reality. After all, the Northern still ran as it always had, Tottenham, Beeton and Cookstown now had a railway, and Alliston over to Duntroon had just managed to squeak in with a line that the Hamilton & North Western had not really wanted to build in the first place, but had been obliged to in order to gain the necessary financial support in Simcoe County. Arguably if the merger had happened two years later, the Beeton branch might never have been built at all, engineering nightmare that it was over the Blue Mountain ridge. 

At the Hamilton & North Western's Board, four directors were "sympatico" with the Grand Trunk, and the other four leaned towards the Canadian Pacific Railway - an interesting mix for the projected combined thrust to reach the CPR.  And closer to home, there was the immediate issue of abandonments at Collingwood and at Allandale/Barrie as the duplicate installations were promptly rationalized in the resulting strained local civic atmospheres, and of course it was the Hamilton & North Western facilities that were about to be sacrificed. The merger was intended to be an arrangement between equals subject to the proportionate contributions of revenue, but the Northern was inclined to behave as if it had taken over the Hamilton & North Western, and mutual suspicions and resentments were rife.

After the merger, the two railways' corporate culture was never the same anymore. The Northern, its Board always somewhat aligned with the philosophies of the Grand Trunk Railway, found itself embroiled and wrestling with Hamilton politics, the impending change of gauge and all of the implications of that with respect to financing, equipment and rollingstock. 
And the one man, Frederic Cumberland, who had been the driving force of the Northern and with his financial acumen, managerial skills and his political astuteness had held the various interests and factions together succumbed to his health issues on August 5, 1881.

(The book Hamilton's Other Railway is a detailed and definitive history of the Hamilton & North Western Railway. To read more about that railway and the book, please click here.)

The Northern & Pacific Jct. Railway

As referenced above, the whole purpose of the merger between the Northern and the Hamilton & North Western had been to join forces to find a combined way of carving a way though the granite of the Muskokas to reach the Northwest.

Sault Ste. Marie was then seen as the immediate springboard to the West with the object of an improved claim to a proportionate share of the expected traffic between the great "Northwest" and Ontario. The CPR had its own plans for a link-up at "the Soo", and the Grand Trunk interests/alliances had two "irons in the fire". One was the Ontario Sault Ste. Marie Railway, incorporated in 1881, that (on paper) had been part of the Midland Railway consolidation (see the history of Peterborough County).

The other was the Northern, North Western & Sault Ste. Marie Railway, also incorporated in 1881, the project of the Northern & North Western Railway. 

By 1883 however, the CPR was vigorously building its branch from Sudbury Junction to Algoma Mills. The Ontario Sault Ste. Marie remained "a paper railway" and the Northern, North Western & Sault Ste. Marie Railway settled to build from Gravenhurst to Callandar, and thence to Nipissing Junction. In 1883, the name was changed to the Northern & Pacific Junction Railway, and a contract for the 111 miles was let to Hamilton's  Hendrie construction firm. Surveys were completed and the line reached Callander (just south of North Bay) in early 1886. Its financing created a political scandal in the House of Commons with the additional need for public subsidy, and Cumberland's Northern Railway empire was now rife for take-over.

The Grand Trunk Railway takes all

Joseph Hickson, General Manager of the Grand Trunk Railway, had been quietly buying up preference shares of both progenitor companies, and had also been skilfully nurturing their mutual suspicions of the past 10 years. By late 1887, the Grand Trunk was in control, and by Deed of Union of January 24, 1888, the GTR took over the 497 miles of the Northern & North Western Railways. The Grand Trunk now had its access to the CPR from southern Ontario, thus forestalling the CPR's own connection for another two decades. Ironically, the Hamilton & North Western's survey to the North was close to the subsequent route of the CPR's MacTier Subdivision.

The 19th century was the golden period of what has now come to be known as the "Railway Age". However, even before World War I and the advent of the automobile, amalgamation, and hence rationalization of the spiderweb-like railway network was inevitable. This had already begun in 19th century southern Ontario, when the Grand Trunk took over a major Ontario rival, the Great Western Railway, in 1882. As it happened, for Simcoe County, this process was already under way in 1879 with the Northern & North Western Railways merger, followed by the Grand Trunk's acquisition of the N&NW in 1888, and its outright acquisition of the Midland Railway of Canada in 1893.

The Grand Trunk Railway in turn, caught in its expansionary Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and the downturn in immigration with the advent of World War I, finally became bankrupt, and on January 31, 1923, was absorbed into the Canadian National Railways System.