The news of the victory of Stephenson’s “Rocket” in the historic railway locomotive contest at Rainhill on the Liverpool & Manchester railway in 1829 scarcely had filtered round the world, when the idea of transporting passengers and merchandise by steam power along two parallel rails occupied the earnest attention of enterprising spirits in Canada. They realised that the new method of locomotion was certain to play an important part in the opening up of British North America. As a result of deliberations, a small body of prominent business men in Montreal applied for a charter to construct a railway from La Prairie to St. John’s in the province of Quebec, which was granted in 1832 under the seal of William IV.

It was an unpretentious enterprise, for the projected line was only some fourteen miles in length. It was named the Champlain & St. Lawrence railway, the idea being to link Lake Champlain, whence New York could be reached by water, with the St. Lawrence. The first section of the line was opened in 1836, though it was not operated by steam. The rails were of wood, and the vehicles were hauled by horses. This system obtained for only one year, however. The first winter sufficed to demonstrate to those concerned with the enterprise that such primitive methods were far from satisfactory. Consequently the “wooden flanges,” as the rails constituting the track were called, were torn up to make way for iron rails, and the steamengine took the place of the animal motor.

A year or two later the objective of the promoters was attained. Lake Champlain was brought into communication with the St. Lawrence at Montreal by a railway some fifty miles in length, the inland sheet of water being tapped at Rouses’s Point at the head of the lake in United States territory. It is stated that Jay Gould, who afterwards became one of the greatest railway-builders and magnates in the United States, gained his first insight of the construction of railways upon this line, by being associated with the location survey. From this humble beginning was woven the huge railway network of Canada, which now gridirons the country in all directions, and aggregates some 25,000 miles.

Other projects were formulated in rapid succession for a comprehensive invasion of the eastern corner of the country. Foremost among these was the Grand Trunk Railway Company, conceived in 1852, to build a trunk road between the Atlantic seaboard and the Great Lakes, which at that time was practically the western commercial limit of the Dominion. It was an English enterprise, and, moreover, was strongly imperial from the sentimental point of view, for it was planned to thread Canadian territory entirely.

The famous firm of railway constructional engineers, Messrs. Peto, Betts & Brassey, fresh from their triumphs on the Continent, were willing to carry out the work. They had an extensive accumulation of plant lying idle, and at the time were seeking for fresh worlds to conquer. Canada presented just the opportunity they desired, and they were ready to provide all the railways that Canada would require for some years to come. The faith in this firm of constructional engineers was so great that British financiers were open to provide any amount of money that might be required.

The negotiations were prolonged, as rival interests opposed the scheme vehemently. The preliminaries passed through many vicissitudes, but the compact between the English financiers and the Canadian authorities was ratified and sealed, at last, for the construction of a main line between Montreal and Hamilton, a distance of about 373 miles, which the Provincial Government undertook to finance to the extent of £3,000, or $15,000, per mile. Hamilton was selected as the western terminal point because therefrom another line extended to the Lakes, while a railway was creeping up from Portland on the Atlantic coast to Montreal. By the construction of this central section, 964 miles of through continuous railway would be provided for the benefit of the population.

But the undertaking proved to be one of the most difficult that the engineers, despite their wide and varied experience, had been called upon to fulfil up to this time. The country traversed was very sparsely populated, the forests were dense, and in winter, under the combined adversities of snow, ice, and intense cold, the situation was terrible. Labour was scarce, wages were high, and material was found to be expensive. In the end it was found that the average cost per mile approximated £8,000, or $40,000, so that to link Montreal with Toronto entailed an expenditure of £2,664,000, or $13,320,000. Moreover, it was one of the largest contracts that the engineers ever had carried out, while the physical conditions harassed them to such an extent that when they balanced up their books they found they had incurred a loss of about £1,000,000, or $5,000,000. The wide gauge of five feet six inches was adopted, and this factor developed into as keen a bone of dissension in Canada as it did in Great Britain, and as in the latter country it was finally abolished, so in Canada it was abandoned in favour of the standard gauge of four feet eight and a half inches, though the conversion cost the Grand Trunk railway a matter of £1,000,000 ($5,000,000).

Yet in building this line the contractors set up an engineering monument which for years ranked as the “eighth wonder of the world.” Montreal was on the north bank of the St. Lawrence, while the link connecting the metropolis with the Atlantic seaboard followed the southern bank of the river. The two sections of line were interrupted by the rolling waterway, which at this point is nearly two miles wide. The spanning of this gap, so as to bring Montreal into direct railway touch with the coast, had been one of the great obstacles to the incorporation of the railway in the first instance, but Messrs. Peto, Betts & Brassey undertook to forge this link. At that time it was so formidable an undertaking as to be thought absolutely incapable of realisation. Indeed, when a suggestion for bridging the St. Lawrence at this point was advanced for the first time, it was laughed to scorn.

However, its construction constituted a vital part of the contract. Accordingly, the contractors lost no time in attacking the undertaking when they secured a foothold in the Dominion. The river was surveyed minutely up and down for a considerable distance, while detailed soundings were made to discover the extent and nature of the foundations requisite for the piers. After infinite labour a suitable site was discovered, and a great measure of credit for the location is due to Alexander M. Ross, who was one of the engineers to the undertaking, George Stephenson acting as consulting engineer. Ross carried carefully prepared and detailed plans of the structure he had formulated to his coadjutator in England, and Stephenson admitted, when first submitted to his notice, that “the idea was certainly startling.” However, he complimented Ross upon his daring, and as the latter engineer had won his spurs in England before he departed to Canada on behalf of the group of capitalists financing the Grand Trunk railway, his work received greater consideration from the eminent engineer than might have been the case otherwise. The result was that when Stephenson went to Canada to consider the subject on the spot he concurred with Ross in the general scheme, and the design was elaborated conjointly.

When the location was settled definitely, the project was assailed vigorously by bridge designers in America, but this animosity was inflamed from the fact that they had prepared alternative proposals for bridging the waterway at a different spot. The rival engineers emphasised the danger from ice, and commented strongly upon the risk, in fact serious danger, arising from this cause, to the full brunt of which Stephenson’s bridge would be submitted. Some critics even went so far as to state that the structure never would be completed, or if so, would come down under the first packing of the ice. Stephenson, however, treated his American detractors with contempt, and, to the mind of the latter worthies, appeared to fly deliberately in the face of Fate by concurring with Ross’s recommendations. That was nearly sixty years ago, but the piers have given no sign of collapsing yet.

The resident engineer and superintendent of the constructional work, Mr. James Hodges, realising the monumental character of the undertaking—for it was a larger bridge-building scheme than ever had been attempted up to this time—spent many hours together wrestling with difficulties as they developed, for the unexpected confronted them at every turn. The ice was one of their greatest perplexities, because during the winter the river is frozen so solidly that it will support the weight of a train, and, indeed, a track has been laid across the waterway in winter to maintain communication between the two banks. When the ice broke up, the floes became jammed and piled against the temporary works around the piers in an inextricable mass to such an extent that it demanded unremitting vigilance to guard against a collapse of the dams under the enormous pressure exerted upon them.

The depth of the river and the current were two other factors which had to be taken into serious consideration, for some of the piers are sunk in twenty-two feet of water, while the velocity of the current is about seven miles an hour. The working season was very short, averaging about twenty-six weeks during the year, and during this period every available man had to be crowded on to the work. When construction was in full swing, between 2000 and 3000 men found employment.

The bridge consisted of a huge rectangular tube, similar to that spanning the Menai Straits, carrying a single track. From end to end it measured 6,592 feet by 16 feet wide, 18 feet in height, and weighed 9,044 tons. It was divided into 25 spans, 24 of which were of 242 feet each, while one was of 330 feet. The piers were built massively in masonry, the stone being obtained from quarries in convenient proximity. The ironwork was prepared in England, each piece being marked carefully for its position in the structure. The bridge had a gradual slope upwards from either bank to the centre, where the height from the bed of the river to the top of the tube was 108 feet. For its erection 2,250,000 feet of timber were required in connection with the temporary work, the piers and abutments demanded the use of some 3,000,000 feet of masonry, and 2,500,000 rivets were used to secure the component parts of the ironwork together. In addition to the bridge proper, some 2,500 feet of approaches on either side had to be fashioned, so that the total length of the work was 9,144 feet. The contracted price for the structure was £1,400,000, or $7,000,000, but it was completed for £100,000 ($500,000) less. Of this total the masonry and temporary work absorbed,£800,000, or $4,000,000, and the ironwork £400,000 ($2,000,000).

While the work was in progress the railway company found increasing traffic, as the sections of completed line were opened, so emphasised the urgency of securing through communication across the river that the contractors were approached, and a bonus of £60,000 ($300,000) was offered to them if they would complete the work a year earlier than was stipulated in the contract. The engineers redoubled their efforts, and on December 17, 1859, the great bridge was opened, though the official ceremony took place five months later, when King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, opened the Victoria Bridge, as it was christened, in the name of Queen Victoria, during his visit to the Dominion.

Stephenson died before his great work was completed. For a quarter of a century or more it constituted one of the sights of the North American continent. As the country became more settled and the volume of traffic flowing to and fro across the river increased, the railway experienced a very great difficulty in handling it over a single line. At last the inadequacy reached such a point that some improvement was imperative. A second bridge would have been too costly, and after considerable reflection it was decided to replace the tubular bridge by one of larger dimensions.

A minute examination of the existing structure was made, and it speaks volumes for the work of Stephenson and Ross, as well as of the contractors, that the bridge appeared as sound and as fit for another century or more as it did on the day it was first opened. The piers had been built so solidly that they did not show the slightest trace of the terrible buffetings and pressure to which they had been subjected by the ice during some fifty winters.

Consequently it was decided to remove the tubular structure and to erect in its place an open truss bridge, 66 feet 8 inches wide, carrying a double track, a roadway for an electric tram-line, space for vehicular traffic, and a pavement for pedestrians. The engineers designing the new structure came to the conclusion that the striking stability and condition of the masonry piers would carry the new bridge with but slight alteration. As a result of this conclusion it was decided to erect the new structure around the old bridge, cutting away the latter span by span, so that there was no interruption to the train service.

This appeared to be a simple expedient, but when the engineers commenced operations on Stephenson’s handiwork they found that it was built of far tougher material than they had expected. The rivets defied withdrawal, so excellently had they been driven home, and one of the engineers showed me one of these securing pieces, which he had preserved as a memento of British handiwork of some seventy years ago. As a matter of fact, as he related, it was far easier to build the new structure than it was to destroy the old, and the cutting away of the old tubular bridge span by span was found to be an exceedingly laborious task.

However, it was achieved, and there was not the slightest interruption in the traffic, which testifies to the skill and care with which the engineers laid their plans. Nor was it attended by any untoward incident, though what might have proved a terrible accident was averted very narrowly during reconstruction, as was related to me by one of the engineers. It was Sunday morning, and they were rebuilding the central part of the bridge. Special men had been stationed at each approach to the bridge, and elaborate instructions had been drawn up for controlling the passage of trains by flag-signalling. Sunday was selected for the most difficult portions of the work, as on that day the trains were few and far between.

On this Sunday morning the work had advanced so satisfactorily that the old tubular span had been removed, and there was a wide gap in the continuity of the ironwork carrying the metals, showing the murky river swinging along at a merry pace below. Everything was ready for completing the new span, when one of the engineers, happening to glance shorewards, observed a train entering the bridge and coming along at a brisk speed. Something had gone wrong; the flagman had misunderstood instructions or had given a wrong signal. The train was speeding to its doom, for there was the yawning gulf. But the engineer never lost his presence of mind. Realising the situation, he threw down his instruments, and ran along the track towards the advancing train waving his arms frantically and yelling like one bereft. The engine-driver, unlike the majority of his ilk on an American railway, concluded that something must be amiss, and applied his brakes sharply, pulling up a short distance from the brink of the abyss. It was a narrow escape; had the engineer hesitated a minute, disaster swift and sudden would have overwhelmed that train.

When the new bridge, with its 22,000 tons of steel, was completed for traffic it was renamed, but as the reconstruction coincided with the Jubilee of Queen Victoria’s reign, the revision comprised merely the perpetuation of that auspicious event, and to-day the structure is known as the Victoria Jubilee Bridge. From first to last the structure has cost £1,800,000 ($9,000,000), of which reconstruction absorbed about £400,000 ($2,000,000).

As the Grand Trunk increased in importance, subsidiary and tributary railways were absorbed. Nor was the original idea of a trunk line overlooked. This end was achieved by pushing towards Chicago, the busy centre of the Middle States. Continuity of rail in this case, however, was interrupted by the St. Clair River, the narrow strait which connects Lakes Huron and Ontario. In the early days communication was maintained by means of ferry-boats, which handled complete trains, but as the river is extremely erratic, with strong currents varying in velocity according to the direction of the wind, and is congested with shipping, the ferry service possessed many shortcomings. When the strait was obstructed with floating ice, the situation became far more serious.

Accordingly, in order to remove these disabilities, a bold solution was elaborated in the form of a tunnel beneath the waterway connecting Sarnia on the Canadian with Port Huron on the United States side of the St. Clair River. It certainly was an audacious remedy for a perplexing problem. The river is 46 feet deep and is nearly half-a-mile wide, so that the tunnel had to be planned at a great depth. However, no better alternative could be offered, for a bridge was quite out of the question, so in 1886 the St. Clair Tunnel Company was formed as a subsidiary undertaking of the railway, to complete a subaqueous link of communication, with Mr. Joseph Hobson as chief engineer.

As the topography of the land on either side is tolerably flat, the question of the approaches had to be settled, and a heavy grade at either end could not be avoided. Technical difficulties were encountered at the very start. A trial shaft was sunk on the Canadian side to a depth of 98 feet, while another shaft on the American side was carried down to 92 feet. The preliminary shafts were elliptical in shape, measuring 4 feet by 8 feet in diameters. When the requisite depths were obtained, galleries were driven at right angles beneath the river. These efforts proving satisfactory, it was decided to build the complete tunnel from either bank from shafts, as in the case of the Blackwall tunnel. The shafts were each 23 feet in diameter, and they were so built that there was a circular ring, the lower face of which carried a knife-edge digging into the ground. The soil was excavated from beneath this knife-edge, and as the brick-wall lining of the shaft was built upon the upper surface of the knife-ring, it was considered that the superimposed weight would drive the knife downwards as the earth beneath was removed.

But these carefully-laid schemes and anticipations went astray. Exasperating failures and mishaps occurred, and at last the engineer changed his plans; the shaft method was abandoned. Instead, he decided to drive the tunnel from either end through the approaches. For this purpose the plant and machinery were removed inland from the shafts for a distance of 1,900 feet on the Canadian, and 1,800 feet on the American bank respectively. Two huge cuttings were driven downhill until the tunnel level was gained, when the burrow beneath the river was commenced. The tunnel itself consists of a circular iron tube or pipe of sufficient diameter to carry a single track. It is 19 feet 10 inches in diameter, is built up of cast-iron rings, and weighs complete 56,000,000 pounds, or about 25,450 tons. Boring was effected from either end by means of the hydraulic shield, and in less than three years the task was finished.

The length of tunnel beneath the water is 2,290 feet, while that under dry land represents another 3,748 feet, making a total length of 6,932 feet. To this must be added 5,580 feet of approaches, which brings the total extent of the work to nearly 12,000 feet, or 2¼ miles. It cost £540,000, or $2,700,000, and has always ranked as a noteworthy achievement in this particular branch of engineering.

Owing to the steepness of the approaches on either side special locomotives had to be built to handle the traffic through this artery. They were powerful creations of the railway engine designer, and when they appeared were the largest steam locomotives in the world. They could haul a train weighing 760 tons, though at times the pace was slow.

But traffic between the United States and Canada increased by leaps and bounds, owing to the provision of this tunnel, with the result that in a very few years the railway authorities found that the tube was quite overtaxed. A solemn conclave was held as to the best ways and means of meeting this development. The track could not be doubled; so the question was how to increase the existing hauling capacity of a single engine. Steam could not meet the question, so was ruled out of court. Then an engineer suggested electrification, and advanced a report to show how the weight of each train might be increased by nearly 25 per cent. with quicker working, and consequently would facilitate the passage of a greater number of trains in a given time.

This engineer, Mr. Bion Arnold, was authorised to proceed with his scheme and to complete his plans for the electrification of the tunnel. He did so, and as a result a specification was drawn up requiring the haulage of a train weighing 1000 tons over the 2¼ miles in 15 minutes, with a maximum speed of 25 miles and a minimum speed of 10 miles per hour respectively. When the plans were made known it was realised that the project comprised the most ambitious electrical undertaking that ever had been attempted up to that time in railway operations, especially as it was insisted that the electrical system should be of a type which constituted its first application to heavy steam railway working. This is what is known as the single-phase alternating current system with overhead conductor.

The invitation for tenders was awaited with keen anticipation throughout the world, as it was conceded to offer a unique opportunity to the electrical engineer. Consequently keen competition was evinced to secure the honour of carrying out such a remarkable undertaking. The contract was secured by the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, and was carried to a successful conclusion at a cost of £100,000 ($500,000). The locomotives now used on this service are among the most powerful in the world. 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. As it is, the 2¼ miles of line beneath the teeming St. Clair River is the heaviest electrically worked section of railway in the world.

Another link with the United States, however, was incumbent to bring the manufacturing centres around Buffalo into closer communication with the Dominion. Yet there was only one point where this link could be provided—across the gorge through which the Niagara River, after tumbling over the lofty cliff, seethes and boils on its way to Lake Ontario. A suspension bridge met the exigencies of highway traffic for some years, but here again improvement was demanded. Accordingly, a new bridge was planned, and this constitutes one of the most graceful structures spanning that fearful rift.

The old bridge fulfilled its services faithfully for forty years, and when demolished was found to be possessed of several years of life. The new bridge is a splendid work, and its close proximity to the Falls offers a striking comparison between the handiwork of Nature and that of the engineer. The bridge leaps across the gorge in a single span, and when one is speeding over the structure in the train, one is at an elevation of 226 feet above the raging waters below. The span is of no less than 550 feet, and the ends are secured to massive anchorages sunk into the face of the cliffs. It is wrought throughout of steel, and is approached from either side over a single truss span 115 feet long, giving a total length of 780 feet.

But the bridge serves a dual purpose. The upper level or deck, 30 feet in width, carries two tracks for the railway’s need, but below this is another deck, 57 feet wide, which has a central carriage-way flanked on either hand by a broad pavement, so that the bridge provides vehicular and pedestrian accommodation between the opposite banks. In order to provide this improved connection between the two nations, a sum of about £100,000 ($500,000) had to be expended. The improved facilities it offered so appealed to the public on both shores that they celebrated its opening in 1897 by a three days’ carnival.

As time sped by, the Grand Trunk railway gradually but surely swallowed its competitors, until at last it was left in undisputed possession of the Province of Ontario, from the railway point of view. To-day it has over 8000 miles of intricate steel ribbon stretched between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic coast, while between Montreal and Chicago the fastest trains in the Dominion hurtle to and fro over a double track 840½ miles in length, which is the longest continuous stretch of double track under one management in the world, and upon which some exhilarating speeds are attained.

When the British capitalists committed themselves to an expenditure of over £9,000,000, or $45,000,000, for the construction of less than 500 miles of line through virgin territory, it is doubtful whether in their rosiest dreams they ever anticipated that it would grow into a huge organisation aggregating a third of the railway mileage of British North America within sixty years.

Development is still being maintained; new territories are being conquered. A new long and sinuous arm, 3,556 miles from end to end, is being stretched out from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, to bring the eastern into direct touch with the western seaboard. The whole has grown from the insignificant little wooden road that was laid between La Prairie and St. John’s in the Province of Quebec eighty years ago.