The Georgian Bay and Seaboard Railway (GB&S) was a former short-line railway in Ontario, Canada, owned and operated by Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). The first sections opened in 1908, and the entire route was fully completed in 1912.
The GB&S was designed to compete with the Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway (OA&PS). Both acted as trans-shipment points between lakers on the upper Great Lakes and Atlantic ports in the east, especially grain shipments from the Canadian prairies to docks in Montreal and the east coast. CPR had originally planned to run a line almost parallel to the OA&PS, but lost an important court case and were forced to build the line much further south than intended. To service the new route, CPR built Port McNicoll on Georgian Bay outside Midland. From here the line ran east-southeast to connect to the CPR's Ontario and Quebec Railway mainline for shipment further east.
The GB&S had a short lifetime as a complete line. CPR abandoned the section between Orillia and Lindsay in 1937 at the height of the Great Depression when the lake trade crashed. The section between Port McNicoll and the CP mainlines at Coldwater were used until 1971, under the guise of the Port McNicoll Subdivision. The section from Lindsay to the mainlines, part of the Bobcaygeon Subdivision, closed in 1987. The lines on docks in Port McNicoll closed in 1992, along with most of the ports on Georgian Bay. The final section serving a limestone quarry in Uhthoff was used as a spur until 1993.
Some sections of the line have been re-used for local roads, rail trails and other purposes, but the majority has returned to farmland.
History
Background Completion of the CRP lines to Fort William in northwestern Ontario near the western end of Lake Superior allowed grain from the entire prairies area to reach the upper Great Lakes. Although there were numerous plans to build connecting lines to the Toronto and Ottawa areas, before these were completed most of this traffic was transshipped to lake freighters ("lakers").
To serve this trade, Canadian Pacific starting operating a fleet of lakers in the 1880s under the Canadian Pacific Railway Upper Lake Service. A number of these were mixed passenger/freight designs, and were fitted in the fashion of the Edwardian era - floating palaces of wood, silver and glass. They had originally been intended as a stop-gap measure to provide passenger service while the railway line was completed along the northern shore of Superior, but they proved to be a profitable operation in their own right, and would operate until 1965.
Prior to the opening of the widened Welland Canal in 1932, lakers could only easily navigate as far as Lake Erie before offloading to trains. Offloading in Erie was not ideal for Canadian cargo, as trains from that area would have to travel through the already congested Toronto area. A much shorter and more practical route was to offload the ships in Georgian Bay, far north of Toronto, and then ship directly east from there. This took 450 miles off the route eastward.
At the time, the closest port accessible by the CPR was in Owen Sound, where a busy port connected to the Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway (TG&B), which CP had gained control of in July 1883. This was originally a narrow-gauge line with a somewhat circuitous route that ended west of Toronto, meaning that shipments moving east had to travel through these already congested lines. This southbound route also did little to reduce the overall distance compared to ports on Erie.
A&NW vs. OA&PS A more suitable port location was Parry Sound, home to the world's deepest natural freshwater port. It is also one of the most eastern points on the upper lakes, as well as the shortest straight-line distance to the many rail lines that already ran to the Ottawa area.
CP's first attempt to address the lake trade was an 1891 plan to extend the Atlantic and North-West Railway (A&NW) to Parry Sound from its existing terminus outside Ottawa at Renfrew. Similar plans had been floated several times for various reasons, but had come to nothing.Ottawa Journal, 27 August 1892 The CPR was not the only company interested in railways in the area; John Rudolphus Booth had purchased enormous tracts of land in central Ontario for logging purposes and was planning a line to allow timber shipments to his mills in downtown Ottawa. These plans solidified as the Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway (OA&PS), initially chartered in 1888.
During this same period the Northern and Pacific Junction Railway (N&PJ) had started pushing northward from Gravenhurst toward Callander and would pass by Parry Sound some distance to the east. Business interests in town formed the Parry Sound Colonization Railway (PSCR) to build a short line from the town to connect to the N&PJ near Burk's Falls. Moving the connection point slightly south to Scotia Junction, they starting construction westward from the N&PJ in 1886. The crews had reached only about halfway to the town when the company ran out of funds.
In 1892 CPR expressed an interest in purchasing and completing the PSCR as the last leg of its A&NW route from Ottawa. Booth swept in and purchased the line out from under them. This action led to a series of tit-for-tat events between the two railways. The CPR was soon making public statements about their plans to build a parallel route to Booth's, and beat his line into service. When Booth's line reached Renfrew, a fight reportedly broke out between rival construction crews.Renfrew Mercury, 2 September 1893
Booth ultimately won the contest due to a wrangle over a narrow valley passage west of Killaloe. A lawsuit between the OA&PS and CPR followed, of which the CPR lost. Rails had already been run on the 19 mile section from Renfrew to Eganville, but the bulk of the proposed 186 mile route was abandoned without any construction taking place. Booth's OA&PS would go on to be the busiest line in Canada, at one point handling as much as 40% of the Canadian grain trade."Track and Tower" brochure, Friends of Algonquin Park
Other routes The CPR did not abandon their plans for a lake port, and started looking for other suitable locations.
One possible solution presented itself in the form of the Montreal, Ottawa & Georgian Bay Canal, which started planning in 1894. The canal would connect Georgian Bay to Lake Nipissing along the French River, and from there, via Trout Lake and Lake Talon, to the Madawaska River and on to the Ottawa River. CPR's mainlines met the proposed route on Lake Nipissing in North Bay, allowing them to pick up the cargo at any point along the line. However, when this route was examined in detail, the price tag was placed at approximately $100 million, and the plans were abandoned.
Just to the south of Parry Sound are two inlets on Georgian Bay with several protected harbours. The southern inlet was already home to the major ports at Owen Sound and Collingwood. These were well served by existing railways; both the GT, Georgian Bay & Lake Erie and the Toronto, Grey & Bruce served the port at Owen Sound, while the Hamilton & Northwestern and Ontario, Simcoe & Huron served Collingwood.
For CPR's purposes these ports had two major problems. One was that the rail lines all ran south, where they connected to mainlines that ran through Toronto and switched near Bathurst Street. Only one of the lines in the southern Ontario area avoided Toronto and was ideally placed; the Midland Railway of Canada (MR) ran around the eastern side of Lake Simcoe and connected to the Lake Ontario mainlines at Port Hope. Unfortunately, the PHL&B was already leased by the GTR, who proved uninterested in sharing when a deal was attempted in 1902.
Midland remained a suitable location for a new port, between Collingwood and Parry Sound. The MR's lines in the area would require careful routing and bridging to avoid a level crossing, but it was possible. The only line that could not be avoided was the north-south N&PJ, but the CPR had already secured crossing rights for another of their lines.
GB&S When the GTR gained control of the OA&PS in 1905 and tightened their grip on the lake trade, CPR decided to move ahead with a port in the Midland area. That year they took out a charter on the Georgian Bay and Seaboard Railway to build a line from Midland to Peterborough, a busy rail hub at that time. As was the custom of the time, railway companies were chartered to build specific routes, so a series of small companies like this were formed and then later absorbed into the operating companies.
However, the route to Peterborough was also blocked by the GTR, who owned lines on every practical approach to the city. In particular, avoiding the Toronto and Ottawa Railway would require moving far to the north or south. The CPR was again forced to re-route, this time selecting a location between Pontypool and Peterborough.
The company began construction of a major port facility across from Victoria Harbour, just outside Midland. Construction on the line started by the Toronto Construction Company in April 1907, and the first section of the railway opened on 29 June 1908. The GB&S initially ran only a short distance east to meet the CPR's Muskoka mainlines in a huge wye junction lying just east of Coldwater. Traffic from the port therefore had to travel through the Toronto area. In 1912, the port was renamed Port McNicoll after CPR's vice president, David McNicoll.
A second section of the line was constructed running from the Coldwater wye to the town of Orillia at the northern tip of Lake Simcoe, opening in December 1911. This formed a massive triangle junction lying between Coldwater and Medonte. At Orillia it crossed the narrows at Lake Couchiching and then continued towards Lindsay. The lines crossed the Victoria Railway just north of town, then crossed the Scugog River and joined the existing line of the CP-leased Lindsay, Bobcaygeon and Pontypool Railway (LB&P) to travel through the town. The line wyed off the LB&P just south of Lindsay and ran the remaining distance to the O&Q lines.
The line was forced to stay west of the Midland Railway lines as they curved south towards Port Hope. The two lines almost met near the town of Bethany, one of the few passes through the Oak Ridges Moraine in the area. The GB&S finally met the O&Q just south of Bethany at a location originally known as Bethany Junction, but later renamed Dranoel as an homage to James W. Leonard, McNicoll's assistant (Dranoel is Leonard reversed). This final section of the line opened in May 1912.
The route was designed to handle heavily laden trains, and was built using 85 pound rails and routed to minimize the grade to a mere 0.4%. Several sections of the line were over-designed in order to allow future expansion. As was typical for smaller charters, on 1 January 1910 the entire line was leased to the CPR for 999 years. The fall harvest of 1910 was the first to be handled through the new port. The GB&S was heavily used during World War I and at its peak was able to handle 60 million bushels of wheat a year.
With the opening of the port and its direct access to Toronto on the CP mainlines, the CP Upper Lakes fleet re-homed in 1912. The CP fleet served both passenger and pack freight, as well as wheat with the opening of the port. The five ships could carry 300,000 tons of wheat a season (10 million bushels), in addition to other freight and passengers.
Expansion plans CPR had big plans for the line, hoping to turn it into one of the major railways for all of Canada. However, the O&Q had not been designed to the same standards as the GB&S and was a major limit to the practicality of the line.