The Americas

by Michael Frewston

  The other provinces to see use of narrow gauge were British Columbia, Alberta, Québec, and the Maritimes provinces – Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. The narrow gauge railways in the two western provinces were built to 914 mm gauge, while all the remainder used 1067 mm gauge. Up until 1949, Newfoundland was a separate colony, and thus was not subject to the Dominion’s edicts regarding its railways, especially their gauge.

  The first narrow gauge railways in all these provinces were privately owned. In the case of Newfoundland, which had the most widespread 1067-mm gauge system, stretching over 1500 km of route distance, and with various investors involved, they nonetheless needed the sanction of the colonial government. Opened in 1898, the various railways in Newfoundland were merged into Canadian National (CN) in 1949, when the province joined Confederation.

  In spite of CN’s best efforts at keeping the province’s railways going, including the transfer of Standard gauge freight cars over the sea ferries to Port aux Basques, where their bogies were exchanged for narrow gauge ones, an operation that was somewhat less than successful, the system fell into decline. With the opening of the Trans-Canada Highway in 1965, Newfoundland’s railways could not compete with the truck, bus and private car. Passenger services were discontinued in the late 1960s.

  Freight operations were all but suspended twenty years later, and Newfoundland’s railways were essentially ‘abandoned’ in 1988, including the termination of the movement of Standard gauge freight vehicles via the ferry. This didn’t mean the railways actually stopped completely operating in that year, but no further investment was made in them or any new service operated, while the existing services were shut down whenever repairs became necessary or demand effectively ceased. The privatisation of CN in 1998 put an end to it all, and the province’s railways finally stopped operating that year. Some of the rolling stock was re-gauged to 914 mm and sold to the White Pass and Yukon Railway.

  The 914 mm gauge of the White Pass and Yukon Railway was the only other narrow gauge to be found in Canada in significant quantity. Today this railway is the only remaining operational narrow gauge railway in Canada.

  Radials, trams and metros:

  Radials:

  I’ll start off this segment talking about the radials, or radial railways, which were mostly confined to the Toronto region and other southern Ontario towns, such as Guelph, but were also to be found out west, such as in the city of Edmonton, Alberta. The term ‘radial’ in the Canadian context is in fact interchangeable with that of ‘interurban’ in America, and exemplifies the overall pattern of these railways, like spokes radiating out in all directions from a hub.

  In Canada, as in the USA, most of the radials were built to 1435 mm Standard gauge. But those in and around Toronto were notable exceptions. The Toronto Street Railway (TSR), the Toronto Railway Company (TRC, and successor to the TSR), and the Toronto and York Radial Railway (which itself was an amalgamation of a number of Toronto street railways) all ran to the unusual gauge of 1495 mm (4 ft 10.875 in). This gauge was to become the standard for street railways in Toronto.

  So where did that unusual gauge come from? As with many such technicalities dating from a century and a half ago, there are all too many urban myths offering an explanation.

  The most credible explanation relates to the initial franchise granted by the City of Toronto to the horse-drawn TSR. This franchise, granted in 1861, permitted the TSR to lay down tracks in Toronto’s streets, but only so long as such tracks were also able to be used by the horse-drawn road-going private carriages and wagons of the day, as noted in the franchise agreement, which read as follows:

  “That the gauge of the said railways shall be such that the ordinary vehicles now in use may travel on the said tracks, and that it shall and may be lawful to and for all and every person and persons whatsoever to travel upon and use the said tracks with their vehicles loaded or empty, when and so often as they may please, provided they do not impede or interfere with the cars of the party of the second part (Toronto Street Railway), running thereon, and subject at all times to the right of the said party of the second part, his executors, and administrators and assigns to keep the said tracks with his and their cars, when meeting or overtaking any other vehicle thereon.”

  It must be remembered that Toronto had not long been renamed from York – or Muddy York, as it was colloquially known, and some sort of paved road surface was becoming a necessity in the perpetually muddy city streets. The City perceived the use of the TSR’s tracks by the public as the ideal quid pro quo.

  The problem of course was that the road-going carriages and wagons of the day had flangeless wheels that almost exactly matched Standard gauge – which meant that they would have to travel on top of the street rails. This they couldn’t do of course without falling off. The answer was to simply widen the gauge just enough to allow the wheels of the carriages to fit snugly inside the rails.

  There are no pictures as to quite how the carriage wheels would run inside the street railway rails (or otherwise use the tracks) – but it is known that the rail base used a very different section from normal T-rail. Instead, it was essentially a wide strip of iron with a raised section forming the rail-head, which the streetcars ran on, allowing the carriages and wagons to run inside the rail-heads on the wide base. It meant that Toronto’s street rails were now just a bit wider than Standard gauge – 1495 mm to be precise. The following drawing shows how it might have been done:

  The 1495 mm track gauge of the radials lasted until January, 1917, when they were nearly all converted to 1435 mm Standard gauge, in order that the Toronto radials could link up with the new Standard gauge radials running to Guelph and other points north and west. Many of these radial lines now carried freight traffic as well as passengers, such trains being hauled by steeple-cab electric locomotives, complete with trolley pole current collection.

  There were concerns expressed by the City of Toronto that such conversion would allow main-line railway freight cars to roam the City streets, but the TRC was able to convince the City that that would not happen (impossible to happen really, when considering the sharp curves inherent in street railways), and indeed Toronto was never blighted – unlike how so many American towns were (and some still are) – by the sight of large freight trains using the City’s street tracks. By the end of the decade Toronto’s street railways were now all to 1435 mm gauge.

  The question remains then that if the radials were being converted to Standard gauge in 1917 and beyond, why are Toronto’s street railways still at 1495 mm gauge today?

  One line wasn’t converted – that of the Toronto Railway Company, which remained at the 1495 mm gauge.

  The TRC, with its owner now experiencing some financial difficulties in connection with his main-line railway activities, rebelled against demands by the City of Toronto to expand the TRC’s radial lines into newly-annexed towns that now became part of the greater metropolitan Toronto area, as well as convert its existing tracks to Standard gauge. The City took the TRC to court, but lost. Having lost its case in court against the TRC, the City formed its own street railway company, the Toronto Civic Railway (TCR).

  While there was obviously a lot of animosity between the TRC and the TCR, at least the TCR was pragmatic in the building of its own street railways. Knowing that eventually all these street railways would eventually link up, it maintained the use of the TRC 1495 mm gauge.

  But that was about as far as such co-operation went. With a now very fragmented street railway system throughout the City, in 1921 the publicly-owned Toronto Transportation Commission (later renamed as the Toronto Transit Commission - TTC) was set up to amalgamate and co-ordinate all the existing street railways, including the TCR. By 1927, all streetcars in Toronto were being operated by the TTC. And all of course to 1495 mm gauge.

  This process meant that a number of radial lines, such as the Toronto and York Metropolitan (Radial) line, which had been converted to Standard gaug
e, now had to be converted back to the TTC gauge! An exception was the Schomberg and Aurora Railroad, which remained at 1435 mm gauge. Parts of it were in fact dual gauged (using four rails – the 60 mm gauge difference was too small for three rails), in order to allow a degree of common track running with the 1495 mm Lake Simcoe Line (itself succeeded by the North Yonge Railways, until closure in 1947), as well as allowing some through freight operations by Standard gauge Canadian National Railways to a tannery in Aurora.

  The abandonment by the TTC of a number of outlying 1495 mm gauge radial lines, in many ways, marked the end of the radial concept in southern Ontario. Grandiose plans had been made to bring radials into the heart of downtown Toronto (most radials stopped well short of the centre of the city), but these plans never saw the light of day.

  Toronto’s voters, in a bitterly fought election, voted down the proposals (which had included a tunnel bringing the railways from the lakeshore up Bay Street right to City Hall), and, alongside fierce competition from both buses and the automobile, not to mention the TTC’s ever increasing influence in resisting any form of street railway other than its own streetcars within Toronto’s environs, the radials died out in southern Ontario.

  A reminder of the Toronto radial is the Halton County Radial Railway – a live operating museum, about 70 km west of Toronto in Halton Region, dedicated to this mode of transportation. As it concentrates on Toronto’s radial railways, the gauge of its tracks naturally conforms, not to Standard gauge, but to that of the TTC’s 1495 mm gauge, which means that any Standard gauge vehicles introduced to the museum (and there are many, not just from Ontario’s radials, but from other systems as well) must have their gauges adjusted to the TTC’s odd gauge.

  Trams and metros:

  I can start with Toronto, essentially continuing on from the demise of the radials. By the late 1920s, Toronto had a sprawling 1495 mm gauge street railway system, with many lines. Over the years a few of these have been shut down, and there were well-advanced plans to close all street railways within the now greatly expanded metropolitan Toronto area.

  But in the early 1970s, a huge revolt was expressed by the City’s citizens against such closure. In a remarkable about-face, the TTC bowed to such resistance, and not only kept the trams running, but decided to invest in new ones, eventually retiring the use of the old PCC streetcars (affectionately known as Red Rockets) that had given around a half-century of service.

  In the 1980s, a new Canadian design appeared, developed under the auspices of the government-owned Urban Transportation Development Corporation (UTDC), and known as the Canadian Light Rail Vehicle (CLRV), together with a later articulated version known as the ALRV. Initially operated in Switzerland (where of course its bogies had to be exchanged for Standard gauge ones), it underwent extensive testing there before being introduced into Toronto.

  Alongside the new trams, some old closed lines (such as on Spadina Avenue) were re-opened, as well as new links built (such as the Queens Quay subway ramp into Union Station).

  Currently, even these CLRV and ALRV trams are now approaching the end of their useful lives, and a new tram, a version of Bombardier’s Flexity tram, is in the course of being introduced, and the CLRV and the ALRV will slowly disappear. Apparently two examples of the CLRV are currently to be seen in a warehouse in Glasgow, UK, though I haven’t been able to verify this.

  There are a couple of intriguing features regarding Toronto’s trams – they still use the old-fashioned trolley pole for current collection (there are plans to convert to pantographs), and much of the renewed trackwork, at least on straight sections, uses flangeless rail, with nothing more than a recess in the concrete road surface to provide a flangeway. Curved track of course still uses flanged rail.

  As well as Toronto’s trams, the city also boasts a very extensive subway (underground) system. Uniquely, it too uses the same 1495 mm gauge as the surface streetcars. The reasons for this are well known – the TTC envisaged some streetcars (primarily maintenance vehicles) accessing the subway’s tracks, although in reality this has rarely happened (current collection being one problem – the trams use overhead wire while the subway uses third rail).

  Toronto also has another transit system – but this time to Standard gauge. The Scarborough Rapid Transit (RT) line, in the north-east of the city, is a single line using linear induction motors. Building it to Standard gauge of course means there can be no connection between the two gauges. Heavy maintenance of the RT requires shipping the cars by road to one of the TTC’s main depots.

  Finally for Toronto, there are plans for 1495 mm gauge subway extensions (along Sheppard Avenue), 1435 mm gauge extensions to the Scarborough RT, and various proposals (some underway) for new 1435 mm gauge LRT lines (such as the Eglinton Crosstown LRT). A new light rail Air Rail Link (now known as the Union Pearson Express), which was opened in 2015 and uses modern low-emission diesel multiple unit trains, forms a Standard gauge link from downtown Toronto’s Union Station to Toronto’s Lester B Pearson airport using some existing main-line railway right-of-way. This line will eventually be electrified, as may other suburban lines in the Greater Toronto Area, such as the services along ‘the lakeshore’, operated by GO (Government of Ontario) Transit.

  Not all of these plans will likely see fruition, as there is much political wrangling as to the best way forward in improving Toronto’s surface and underground rail systems. One thing is for sure – the City will forever be stuck with two rail gauges just 60 mm apart.

  Other cities in Canada also have metro and street railway systems, all to 1435 mm Standard gauge (including those systems now defunct, such as the Ottawa Electric Railway). Vancouver has its famous Skytrain – a completely automated (driverless) system almost 70 km long opened in time for Expo ’86. In Calgary, a city of just 1 million inhabitants, the hugely popular LRT line there has the third highest daily ridership of any transit system in North America. A similar system also operates in Edmonton.

  In Ontario, Ottawa has created its O-Train – a diesel multiple unit that is really little more than a half-hearted attempt at an LRT system, using 8 km of an existing main-line track, after its hugely expensive busway system reached capacity. New systems are proposed for Victoria and Vancouver in BC, and Hamilton, Waterloo Region, and Peel Region (just west of Toronto) in Ontario. These will all be Standard gauge if they go ahead. Vancouver already boasts a new Standard gauge demonstration line in the city, using Bombardier Flexity Outlook trams borrowed from Brussels.

  Montreal’s metro uses the French VAL rubber-tyred system. As in Paris and other French cities, the supplementary running rails are 1435 mm apart (see Part 2). However, as the entire system is rubber-tyred, there are no conventional steel-wheeled trains using the supplementary steel rails.

  Our very last tramway (and indeed the very last railway in this book) takes us to the northern reaches of Canada, the Yukon. The city of Whitehorse operates a short tram line, all of 1 km in length, and claimed as the most northerly tramway in the world. Its gauge is 900 mm, as its tram (there is only one) was imported from Lisbon, Portugal, which also used this gauge. Lacking an overhead wire, it has to tow its own diesel generator.

  Songs about Canada’s railways:

  I would like to end this book on a slightly lighter note, talking, not about Canada’s railway gauges, but about Canadian songs that embody the railway – in particular, songs that go to the very heart of what the railway means in terms of the very existence of Canada as a country.

  Gordon Lightfoot is probably Canada’s most famous and prolific song writer and singer. Many of his songs symbolise the sadness and despair of men far from their homes and missing their family and loved ones, such as In The Early Morning Rain, or Did She Mention My Name.

  Many of his songs have been ‘covered’ by other singers, but one song remains uniquely his own – the Canadian Railroad Trilogy. It is about the building of the Trans-Canada railway, and the making of Canada in the process. The first verse is particul
arly emblematic in setting the scene:

  “There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run,

  When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun,

  Long before the white man and long before the wheel,

  When the green dark forest was too silent to be real.”

  A later verse is equally evocative of Canada and the part the railway played in the very formation of the country:

  “For they looked in the future and what did they see,

  They saw an iron road runnin' from sea to the sea,

  Bringin' the goods to a young growin' land,

  All up through the seaports and into their hands.”

  Another Lightfoot song is Steel Rail Blues. Like the other songs mentioned above, it is about a young man marooned in some remote town. This particular verse captures the very essence of catching the train to go home:

  “Well look over yonder, across that plain,

  The big drive wheels a-pounding along the ground,

  Gonna get on board and I’ll be homeward bound,

  Now I ain’t had a home-cooked meal, and Lord I need one now,

  And the big steel rail gonna carry me home to the one I love.”

  Finally, another folk singer, who goes by the name of George Hamilton IV, in his song Canadian Pacific, also sings about a young man far from home, this time travelling by rail from one end of Canada to the other. The chorus echoes the vastness of Canada:

  “Canadian Pacific, carry me three thousand miles,

  Through the valleys and the forests, to the sunshine of her smiles;

  ‘Cross the plains and rugged mountains, keep this wandering boy from harm,