Grand River Railway


The Grand River Railway was an interurban electric railway in what is now the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, in Southwestern Ontario, Canada.

History

Background

Preston and Berlin Railway

Starting in the 1850s, Canada West began to see its first railways. Of these, the first chartered was the Great Western Railway, which was completed in 1853-54 and connected Niagara Falls to Windsor via London and Hamilton, linking many contemporary centres of population, industry, and trade. in 1855, a branch line was built to Toronto, which fell on the east side of the Grand River, connecting towns and villages in the area such as Galt, Hespeler, Preston, and Guelph. Galt and Guelph in particular were developing into significant urban areas in the region.
In the following year of 1856, the Grand Trunk Railway, the dominant railway in Canada East, made a major westward push by acquiring the fledgling Toronto and Guelph Railroad, whose line was then under construction, and extended this line to Sarnia through Berlin. Once complete, this made Guelph a major three-way rail junction. In this climate of rapid rail development, ambitious town boosters sought to have their town or village also become a railway junction in the hopes that it would transform it into a city overnight. The merchants of Preston, who saw themselves as being in direct competition with those of Galt, quickly worked to establish a railway which would connect the Great Western and Grand Trunk through their own town and the town of Berlin across the river. In 1857, their dream would be realized with the completion of the Preston and Berlin Railway, which was routed through the small mill towns of Doon and German Mills, with a bridge crossing the Grand River north of Blair. This initial attempt to connect the two cities was short-lived, however, as the bridge was damaged by ice flows in January 1858, and the railway was operational for less than three months. The surviving sections of the line were sold to the Grand Trunk Railway, which instead chose to extend the line south to Galt through the village of Blair in 1872, bypassing Preston entirely.

Early street railways

The Berlin and Waterloo Street Railway began operation in 1888 as a firmly 19th-century-style horse-drawn street railway. However, things would quickly change; by the 1890s, the tone of railway fever had shifted, and many radial railways were being developed throughout Canada and the United States, as cities like Toronto and New York accelerated the process of amalgamation of nearby villages and towns, and urban businesses sought out customers travelling to the city from the suburbs. These systems were typically electrified rather than steam-powered, and used tram-style rolling stock to move a relatively small number of passengers at frequent headways within a region, rather than more traditional passenger trains pulled by dedicated locomotives, which were largely relegated to long-haul trips. Growing towns and cities sought the ideal hybrid system of streetcars and railways: a light rail service which could easily shift from street rails to dedicated rail corridors and back again, allowing them to connect to important destinations in downtown areas while also being fast enough to connect cities to each other at the speed expected of contemporary passenger rail. These systems were often also known as interurbans due to the appeal of easily connecting neighbouring cities together with a regional rail line, often municipally owned and operated.
The first such railway in the region was the Galt and Preston Street Railway, which began operations with half-hourly service in 1894. With Preston boosters still concerned about the potential effect of the railway on their town's economy, the plan ensured that Preston would be the location of many operational aspects of the railway, including the power house, car barns, and machine shops. A year later, in 1895, it was extended to Hespeler and renamed the Galt, Preston and Hespeler Street Railway, connecting the three largest settlements of what 80 years later would become the amalgamated city of Cambridge. In the same year, the Berlin and Waterloo Street Railway began to take steps to modernize its service by converting its horse cars to run on electric power. This proved unsuitable and a consortium of local businessmen, impatient at the lack of progress, purchased the railway and outfitted it with new, purpose-built electric trams, which were manufactured in Peterborough.

Canadian Pacific Railway influence

The Canadian Pacific Railway had from the beginning taken an interest in the Galt and Preston Street Railway, then the Galt, Preston and Hespeler Street Railway, as an electric freight service would provide a convenient way to serve smaller freight customers profitably, due to the ability for electric locomotives to reverse without requiring a loop, as steam locomotives did. The G&P's charter, ostensibly mostly to provide Preston travellers with a connection to the Canadian Pacific via Galt, as well as to facilitate regional passenger transportation in general, provided Canadian Pacific an opportunity to "piggyback" and increase its freight operations. The Grand River area had long been dominated by the Grand Trunk Railway, and Canadian Pacific sought ways to compete with the Grand Trunk. With its close relationship with Canadian Pacific, the G&P provided free freight service to Canadian Pacific's depot in Galt, drawing business away from the Grand Trunk and provoking an all-out freight war. In the truce agreed upon by both companies, Berlin remained Grand Trunk territory, while both railways would continue to serve Galt. Canadian Pacific, meanwhile, took control of the GP&H indirectly by buying up a controlling stake in the company through a proxy, its own General Superintendent J. W. Leonard, already laying the groundwork for the undermining of its agreement with the Grand Trunk.
By the turn of the century, there was an explosion in plans for railway lines to serve Berlin, Preston, and Galt; the Hamilton Radial Electric Railway announced a plan to build a connection to Berlin, while the plan for a Preston-to-Berlin connection via Doon and Blair was revived. In 1903, the Preston and Berlin Street Railway, which had been chartered in 1894 and whose construction had begun in 1900, was leased by the GP&H, and began operations in 1904. A Berlin, Waterloo, Wellesley, and Lake Huron Railway was being promoted at the same time, which was planned to serve a staggering number of destinations from Berlin northward to Lake Huron. However, with many of its promoters and supporters being connected to Canadian Pacific and the GP&H, and without the funds for such an ambitious project, scholars like Peter F. Cain have argued that the BWW&LH was never planned to be constructed, and was simply a vehicle to further Canadian Pacific's ambitions to enter into Kitchener, despite its agreement with the Grand Trunk a decade earlier. In 1908, the GP&H and Preston and Berlin Street Railway were merged under the BWW&LH name, thereby giving Canadian Pacific a means to enter the Kitchener freight market, while ostensibly following the letter of its agreement with the Grand Trunk. In 1914, it was renamed to the Grand River Railway.
As CP's consolidation of lines with freight potential had been ongoing, the City of Berlin made a successful bid to take over the Berlin and Waterloo Street Railway and operate it as a public service, which was complete in 1906. This line, which operated primarily along King Street, largely served commercial areas, and was most suitable for passengers, but served a role similar to local bus services today, rather than a regional railway role similar to the Galt, Preston, and Hespeler Street Railway. In 1921, this separation of services increased as the Grand River Railway re-routed its trains to more fully follow the north–south freight line as a part of its switch from 600 V DC to 1500 V DC electrification in order to match the Lake Erie and Northern Railway, a move which prefigured their consolidation ten years later. Throughout the rest of the 1920s, the Grand River Railway continued to shift to using shared freight track, a move which was hastened by municipal politicians working to force trains off of King Street in favour of car traffic.

Canadian Pacific Electric Lines

In 1931, the Grand River Railway was consolidated with the Lake Erie and Northern Railway, another Canadian Pacific Railway subsidiary, to form the Canadian Pacific Electric Lines. Under unified CPEL management, the two services were advertised in tandem, and LE&N rolling stock received repairs at the Grand River Railway's Preston barn. During the same year, the Grand River Railway advertised hourly service on every day except Sunday between Galt, Hespeler, Preston, and Kitchener, from 5:50 a.m. to 11:45 p.m., and nine trains a day to Waterloo, reflecting Waterloo's lesser importance and smaller population at the time. The Lake Erie and Northern, with its longer line and lower ridership, advertised primarily for summer excursion trips to Port Dover from the hot and crowded urban centres to the north, and during other parts of the year was largely sustained by its freight business.

Decline of passenger service

Bus services
Bus services became increasingly common throughout the 1920s and 1930s as more roadways were paved, fuel prices decreased, and bus manufacturing began to scale up. Canadian Pacific followed these trends with the founding of its Canadian Pacific Transport Company, which was used to supplement and/or replace some train journeys.
Collisions with automobiles
Throughout the 1930s, collisions between interurban cars and private automobiles became increasingly common in urban parts of Kitchener-Waterloo, which was covered in detail by local newspapers like the Waterloo Chronicle alongside coverage of car-on-car collisions and pedestrians being struck and killed by automobiles. Around November 1937, the railway switched from whistles to horns at crossings, which were louder, leading to complaints from residents along the line and from the Waterloo town council. These incidents only continued after the end of the Great Depression and the Second World War, when automobile ownership and traffic volumes climbed steadily. More reliable personal cars, as well as improved highway and automobile service infrastructure, made it easier to drive to unfamiliar cities whose street geometry could prove dangerous.
  • In January 1930, the earliest reported collision at Cedar Grove Avenue in Kitchener occurred when Joseph Zinger, while driving his automobile, crashed into a Grand River Railway interurban car.
  • on 1 August 1931, Charles Frank Houston died while pinned under his car following a collision with a Grand River Railway train at the Centreville crossing. A coroner's inquest later found that he had suffocated to death. The inquest absolved the train crew of blame, but "recommended the installation of visible warnings and signals at the crossing."
  • In July 1932, Leander Cressman of New Dundee was driving along Mill Street in Kitchener when his motor car collided with a Grand River Railway train, critically injuring him. He died later in hospital.
  • On 15 December 1937, Reginald E. Simpson, the local manager for the Sun Oil Company, was driving his new automobile along Kent Avenue when he was struck by a Grand River Railway car being driven by motorman H. C. Smith. Simpson was killed and his automobile was carried. His wife, Mary E. Simpson, claimed $86,155.23 in damages against the railway.
  • On 12 October 1946, Earl Hutchins, who was from Toronto, was driving through the Grand River Railway crossing in Centreville when his automobile was crushed by an interurban car. Similarly to the Simpson incident almost ten years earlier, Hutchins and his three passengers were killed. His wife subsequently claimed $50,000 in damages against the railway.