The Nosbonsing and Nipissing Railway was a portage railway

Portage railway

A portage railway is a short and possibly isolated section of railway used to bypass a section of unnavigable river or between two water bodies which are not directly connected...

 constructed by Ottawa

Ottawa

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

 lumberman John Rudolphus Booth

John Rudolphus Booth

John Rudolphus Booth was a Canadian lumber and railway baron. He controlled logging rights for large tracts of forest land in central Ontario, and built a railway to extract his logs; and from Ottawa through to Vermont to export lumber and grain to the United States and...

 in 1884, although its Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

 charter

Incorporation (business)

Incorporation is the forming of a new corporation . The corporation may be a business, a non-profit organisation, sports club, or a government of a new city or town...

 dates from March 1886, after a land claim dispute when Northern and Pacific Junction Railway

Northern and Pacific Junction Railway

The Northern and Pacific Junction Railway is a historic Canadian railway located in northern Ontario.It was constructed in the 1880s to connect the railways of Southern Ontario to the new transcontinental line of the Canadian Pacific Railway , from the Northern Railway of Canada, at Gravenhurst,...

 tried to cross it, (resolved only after) J. R. Booth provided a diamond crossing

Level junction

In U.S. railroad practice, a level junction is a railway junction that has a track configuration in which merging or crossing railroad lines provide track connections with each other that require trains to cross over in front of opposing traffic at grade In U.S. railroad practice, a level junction...

 to allow that railway to cross his.

The purpose of this railway was to carry sawlogs from the waters of Lake Nipissing

Lake Nipissing

Lake Nipissing is a lake in the Canadian province of Ontario. It has a surface area of , a mean elevation of above sea level, and is located between the Ottawa River and Georgian Bay. Excluding the Great Lakes, Lake Nipissing is the fifth-largest lake in Ontario. It is relatively shallow for a...

, five and a half miles to Lake Nosbonsing, at the headwaters of the Mattawa River

Mattawa River

The Mattawa River is a river in central Ontario, Canada. It flows east from Trout Lake east of North Bay and enters the Ottawa River at the town of Mattawa. Counting from the head of Trout Lake, it is 76 km in length...

. From there the logs were driven

Log driving

Log driving is a means of log transport which makes use of a river's current to move floating tree trunks downstream to sawmills and pulp mills.It was the main transportation method of the early logging industry in Europe and North America...

 down the Mattawa and Ottawa River

Ottawa River

The Ottawa River is a river in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. For most of its length, it now defines the border between these two provinces.-Geography:...

s to Booth's mills at Ottawa.

This railway was abandoned in 1912. The charter of the Nosbonsing & Nipissing Railway Company remained effective for operation of Booth's logging railway at Egan Estate, near Madawaska.