Canadian Northern Railway

The Canadian Northern Railway is a former railway company in Canada, which existed from 1899 to 1923. Like the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, they should form a competitor to the successful transcontinental line of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

The company was founded in 1899 by William Mackenzie and Donald Mann through the merger of smaller railway companies in Manitoba. The transcontinental link was less by building a large continuous new route, but through the acquisition and merger of existing railway lines. In 1905 they reached Edmonton and 1915 they finally ran a distance from Montreal to Vancouver ( the western terminus, the Pacific Central Station, but was not opened until 1919). The transcontinental route ran over Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton and crossed the Rockies on the Yellowhead Pass, near the route of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. According to financial difficulties the company was taken over in 1918 by the Canadian government and in 1923 part of the Canadian National Railway (formerly Canadian National Railways ).

See also: History of the railway in North America