The Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway (TG&B) was a railway company which operated in Ontario, Canada in the years immediately following the Canadian Confederation of 1867. It connected two rural counties, Grey County and Bruce County, with the provincial capital of Toronto to the east.
The TG&B suffered from engineering and financial problems throughout its existence, and its struggle to finance a gauge conversion from narrow to standard gauge led to a takeover by bondholders and subsequent acquisition by the Canadian Pacific Railway through its proxy, the Ontario and Quebec Railway. The bulk of the former TG&B lines were managed under Canadian Pacific's Bruce Division, which had its divisional point at Orangeville, the junction of the original TG&B lines to Owen Sound and Teeswater.
Background
Early development of railways in the Province of Canada, which consisted of Lower Canada (Quebec) and Upper Canada (Ontario), was delayed by lack of capital and industrial infrastructure. The first major national railway development was the construction of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada on a gauge of from Portland, Maine to Sarnia, Canada West via Montreal and Toronto, with a branch from Richmond to Levis, near Quebec City.
Investment funds for railways were scarce in the Dominion of Canada because the economy was mainly agricultural, and most capital was tied up in land. The line was constructed by the English contractors Peto, Brassey and Betts, who undertook to raise the capital required in London if they obtained the contract. As a result of the exorbitant cost of land and charters, overbuilding stone bridges and stations to English standards, and initial lack of traffic to support the capital cost, the line was soon insolvent. This failure together with a severe recession, and the US Civil War meant that no more capital could be raised, and almost no railways were built in Canada during the 1860s.
There was a return of confidence with the Confederation of the British North American colonies into Canada in 1867, and the political promise of a transcontinental railway to the Pacific. Merchants, industrialists, and politicians of Toronto, Ontario and surrounding counties began to look for ways of opening up the back country 'bush' north of the city to settlement and trade. Lakes and rivers had been the principal means of transportation but they were frozen and unusable for 4–5 months of the year.
Road construction was primitive, and trees were cut down and laid side by side in swamps to form 'corduroy' roads. Most roads were passable in winter (hard frozen) and summer (hard baked) but impassable mud troughs in spring and fall. The government struggled to find a way to provide essential railway service inexpensively through wild, unsettled territory.
Choice of narrow gauge, promotion, and financing
A charismatic Scots-born Toronto wharfinger and trader, George Laidlaw took up the challenge. He was a business associate of the powerful Gooderham and Worts Distillery interests, and other Toronto bankers and merchants. Laidlaw advertised in newspapers in London, England, for suggestions as to how railways might be built more cheaply in Canada. He received a reply from Carl Abraham Pihl, first managing engineer of Norway's Railway Construction Bureau. Pihl had worked on the construction, under Robert Stephenson, of the first Norwegian trunk railway the Hovedbanen from Christiania (today Oslo) to Eidsvoll, which opened in 1854 where the same issues of overbuilding a line in a small farming and fishing economy, had led to an unaffordable railway.
He now advocated the use of the narrow gauge of with all major construction in wood, which system he had developed since the early 1860s. Pihl's ideas had been noticed in Britain where the smaller Ffestiniog Railway in Wales was also proving a success. After a visit to Norway the gauge was taken up by Sir Charles Fox and Sons, the firm founded by the eminent engineer and constructor of the Crystal Palace at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Fox had a very influential consulting practice throughout the former British Empire and Colonies and was instrumental in gaining acceptance for the gauge in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
The choice of the narrow gauge led to vigorous challenges in London, England and Canada. Zerah Colburn, the editor of the London technical journal Engineering, used its columns to violently criticise the advice of Douglas Fox, the elder son of Sir Charles Fox, to the promoters, which was taken up by the Hamilton, Ontario Spectator which supported that town's claim to be the hub (rather than Toronto) of railway traffic for western Ontario.
Abraham Fitzgibbon, the chief engineer of the Queensland Railways, came to the aid of the promoters with a speech in Toronto. The main opposition to the narrow gauge came from the Wellington, Grey and Bruce Railway in the west and the Port Whitby and Port Perry Railway in the east. Both lines were proposing to build competing lines on the "Provincial" gauge and claimed that the choice of the narrow gauge was a ruse to ensure that all the traffic of the districts would be exclusively trans-shipped at Toronto, rather than Hamilton and Whitby, Ontario. The opposition narrowly failed to defeat the narrow gauge, and Provincial Charters were granted to the Toronto and Nipissing Railway, and the Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway, on March 4, 1868.
George Laidlaw sought to raise money to finance the construction of the narrow-gauge railways by the following means, in order of preference: Bonuses approved by vote of taxpayers from each township and county on the route of the line Provincial government grants per mile of track built, under the "Aid to Railways Act" Sale of Stock Sale of Bonds Loans
Laidlaw and other directors fanned out through the townships speaking at taxpayer meetings in support of bonuses for the railways. His messianic style at these meetings often generated so much enthusiasm that motions were immediately approved to grant large sums in support of the lines. On the morrow the local politicians often had second and more sober thoughts and sought to control the process themselves, trying to dictate where and when the money would be spent, and on what.
Long campaigns ensued with businessmen and progressive farmers whose lots would be near the line advocating large unconditional grants and those in more distant locations opposing the free bonuses of tax money. Generally, the response of the settlers, anxious to expand opportunities for trade and travel, was generous. However, when strongly opposed, Laidlaw's combative and insulting responses could generate such opposition that townships delayed contributing money for years or refused entirely.
By late 1874, when the TG&BR was open to Owen Sound and almost complete to Teeswater, the approximate total of the capital account, excluding minor receipts and expenses, since the start of construction in 1869, was:
Receipts ($)
Municipal Bonuses 869,000 Government Grants 232,000 Calls on Stock 271,000 Sale of Bonds 1,201,000
Total Receipts 2,573,000
Expenditures ($)
Engineering 206,000 Right of Way 47,000 Construction 1,649,000 Iron and Fastenings 368,000 Rolling Stock 392,000
Total Expenditures 2,562,000
Contrary to the hopes of the promoters, the proceeds from bonuses, grants, and stock sales fell short of paying for construction of the roadbed and structures by over $400,000. This deficit and the cost of purchasing iron and equipment had to be made up by issuing bonds whose guaranteed interest payments were a heavy burden on the income of the TG&BR and ultimately were to prove fatal to its prospects.
The Act empowering the Toronto, Grey and Bruce specified that the railway should extend from Toronto via Orangeville, to Mount Forest and Durham, where it would split into a northerly branch to Southampton and a southerly one to Kincardine. Another branch north to Owen Sound was to commence at Mount Forest or Durham. A line from Toronto first had to get to the Humber Valley at Weston by means of a third rail in the 5 ft 6in gauge track of the Grand Trunk Railway, proceed up the Humber Valley to Bolton, Ontario and then traverse the Caledon Mountain to gain Orangeville via the Credit Valley. The line would then go west to Arthur, and then north to Mount Forest.
On the lower part of the line, as far as Orangeville, municipal bonuses were generally given freely and generously, but beyond that place Garafraxa and Luther townships did not contribute towards the 15 miles of the line along their township borders. At first blocked from reaching Owen Sound via Durham, the TG&BR eventually soundly trounced the Wellington, Grey and Bruce Railway in bonus elections in Grey County, and reached Owen Sound via Shelburne and Dundalk, Ontario. The TG&BR lost most of its battles with the WG&BR in Bruce County. Eventually it abandoned any hope of reaching Kincardine and settled for a western terminus at Teeswater.
Engineering
The Toronto, Grey and Bruce and the Toronto and Nipissing Railways were promoted at the same time and with similar objectives by an interlocking group of Ontario businessmen and politicians. It is not surprising that the group saved by employing one chief engineer to apply the same design principles and choices on both lines. The first consulting engineer in Canada was John Edward Boyd of New Brunswick, who conducted the preliminary surveys over the ground to Orangeville and Uxbridge.
Douglas Fox came to Canada several times in 1868 and 1869 to support the parliamentary campaign and verify the surveys. On his return to England in summer of 1869, he made arrangements for an associate, Edmund Wragge, to come to Canada at once to take up the engineering of both lines. In August Wragge visited Pihl in Norway to see his narrow gauge lines and arrived in Toronto in September 1869. The tenders for the first sections of line were immediately put out.
The engineering of the TG&BR was of the more substantial nature on the two lines; including three major bridges at the crossing of the Humber River, the Grand River, and the Saugeen River at Mount Forest; and the ascent of the Niagara Escarpment (Caledon Mountain) between Mono Road and Charleston (now Caledon village) which involved a "horseshoe" reverse curve of radius and a gradient of 2% or 1:50.
The line leaving Toronto Union Station through Parkdale from 1873 to 1879 offered the unusual coincidence of parallel running with the -gauge Northern Railway of Canada and two (standard-gauge) rail lines.Lavallée (1972) p.15 Wragge appointed Alan McDougall as his first resident engineer on the TG&BR. Later one of the resident engineers was Charles Sproatt of Toronto, who later became Toronto City Engineer. Edmund Wragge remained Chief Engineer of the Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway until its absorption into the CPR.
Construction
The successful contract bidder on the first section of the Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway as far as Mount Forest was Frank Shanly. The line was opened to Orangeville in September and to Mount Forest in December 1871.
The contract for the Grey Extension from Orangeville Junction to Owen Sound was split between Frank Shanly (Orangeville Junction to Berkeley), and William Innes McKenzie (Owen Sound to Berkeley), completed in August 1873. Shanly completed this work satisfactorily but subsequently encountered financial difficulties with a Midland Railway of Canada contract, and the work on the Bruce Extension from Mount Forest to Harriston was awarded solely to McKenzie. After the death of his partner, John Shedden, William Innes McKenzie himself became insolvent and the line from Harriston to Teeswater was completed in November 1874 by small contractors from Mount Forest.
Locomotives