Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad

The Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad (C & SL) was a railway company in Lower Canada (now Quebec ). Your Opened in 1836, 26 -kilometer-long railway line in colonial track ( 1676 mm) lay south-east of Montreal and was the first railway line in the area of Canada. The successor company Montreal and Champlain Railroad was founded in 1857 in 1872 in the Grand Trunk Railway on.

History

A group of Montreal businessmen around the brewery owner John Molson and the banker Peter McGill founded in 1832, the C & SL. The goal was to connect the St. Lawrence River and the Rivière Richelieu similar to a Portage each other. Through this shortcut the unwound with ships freight from Montreal via Lake Champlain and the Hudson River to New York should be facilitated. Two American surveyors laid down the track. You should run from the town of Saint -Jean -sur -Richelieu to the small village of La Prairie (twelve kilometers south of Montreal on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River ).

Construction began in January 1835 as a track you chose the so-called colonial gauge of 5 feet and 6 inches ( 1676 mm).; the rails were made of six -inch-wide pine logs, which were linked with iron plates and bolts ( in the 1850s, replaced by iron rails ). The first locomotive, the Dorchester, came from the factory by Robert Stephenson in Newcastle upon Tyne and was driven by the burning of wood. Test rides on the route took place at night to scare as few residents. On July 21, 1836 the official opening, the regular operation began four days later.

Although the freight did not develop as hoped, as the boatmen felt the freight costs to be too high, however, surpassed all expectations of the passenger. 1851, the line to Rouses Point in the State of New York was extended in 1852 to Saint -Lambert directly across from Montreal. The C & SL merged in 1857 with the Montreal and New York Railroad to Montreal and Champlain Railroad (M & C). 1864 leased the Grand Trunk Railway, the M & C, 1872, she took over the company completely. A year later, the line was converted to standard gauge spurt. Since 1923, the track owned by the Canadian National Railway, which still handles freight on it.