Port Whitby and Port Perry Railway - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Port Whitby and Port Perry Railway (PW&PP) was a former railway running north from Whitby

Whitby, Ontario

Whitby is a town in Durham Region. Whitby is located in Southern Ontario east of Toronto on the north shore of Lake Ontario, and is home to the headquarters of Durham Region...

to Port Perry

Port Perry, Ontario

Port Perry is a community located in Scugog Township, Durham Region, Ontario, Canada. The town is located east of Uxbridge and southwest of Peterborough. Many residents commute to Toronto on a daily basis. Port Perry's municipal website reported a population of just over 9,500 in 2010.Port Perry...

, about 50 km east of Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

. It was built to connect local grain and logging interests with the railway mainlines on the shores of Lake Ontario

Lake Ontario

Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south by the American state of New York. Ontario, Canada's most populous province, was named for the lake. In the Wyandot language, ontarío means...

. It was later extended northeast to Lindsay

Lindsay, Ontario

Lindsay is a community of 19,361 people on the Scugog River in the Kawartha Lakes region of south-eastern Ontario, Canada. It is approximately west of Peterborough...

, becoming the Whitby, Port Perry and Lindsay Railway (WPP&L).

The railway was never very successful, as the original engineering was considered sub-par and reliability was poor from the start. It earned the nickname "The Nip 'n Tuck", a euphemism for something considered unreliable. The last train ran in 1939, a specially commissioned passenger train, and the rails were pulled up in 1941 to feed wartime steel production.

Background

Reach Township started filling out in the 1840s and developed a rivalry between three incorporated towns, Prince Albert, Port Perry and Manchester. The three towns were only a kilometer from each other, lying in an east-west line at the southern tip of Lake Scugog

Lake Scugog

Lake Scugog is an artificially flooded lake in Scugog Township between the town of Port Perry, Ontario and the town of Lindsay. The lake has been raised and lowered several times over its history. Though not technically part of the Kawarthas due to its shallow depths, it is often geographically...

. Rivalries between the towns were intense, and Peter Perry

Peter Perry

Peter Perry was a businessman and political figure in Upper Canada.He was born in Ernestown, Ontario in 1792, the son of Robert Perry and Jemima Gary Washburn. His father was a United Empire Loyalist from Vermont who had served with the Queen's Rangers and Edward Jessup's Loyal Rangers during the...

predicted that one day goats would eat grass off of Prince Albert's main street.

Simcoe Street, a graveled toll road

Toll road

A toll road is a privately or publicly built road for which a driver pays a toll for use. Structures for which tolls are charged include toll bridges and toll tunnels. Non-toll roads are financed using other sources of revenue, most typically fuel tax or general tax funds...

, had recently been constructed through Prince Albert. By 1850, Prince Albert was the second largest grain-buying market in what was then known as "Canada West" (today's 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....

). Grain and timber, the major exports from the area to the north, were hauled to Prince Albert, ganged into larger loads, and then sent southward by horse team on Simcoe Street for shipment abroad.

In the 1850s Abraham Farewell, an early advocate of the development of Ontario County through the construction of gravel roads, predicted that unless a railway was built from Georgian Bay

Georgian Bay

Georgian Bay is a large bay of Lake Huron, located entirely within Ontario, Canada...

to Whitby, control of the inland grain and timber trade would be taken over by Toronto

Toronto

and Port Hope

Port Hope, Ontario

Port Hope is a municipality in Southern Ontario, Canada, about east of Toronto and about west of Kingston. It is located at the mouth of the Ganaraska River on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in the west end of Northumberland County...

interests. There had been some talk of introducing the "Port Whitby & Port Huron Railway" to pre-empt this possibility, and although a charter was granted in April 1853, no money was forthcoming and nothing came of these early plans.

By the 1860s the need to connect to the newly forming mainlines on Lake Ontario

Lake Ontario

had become more pressing. Plans for the Toronto and Nipissing Railway

Toronto and Nipissing Railway

The Toronto and Nipissing Railway was chartered in 1868 to build a narrow gauge railway in Ontario, Canada from Toronto to Lake Nipissing, via York, Ontario, and Victoria Counties. It opened in 1871, with service between Scarborough and Uxbridge. By December 1872 it was extended to Coboconk...

(T&N) that would connect Beaverton

Beaverton, Ontario

Beaverton is a community in Brock Township in the Regional Municipality of Durham, Ontario, Canada.Originally part of Thorah Township in Ontario County, Beaverton was first settled in 1822. The settlement is located on Lake Simcoe at the mouth of the Beaver River...

to the dockyards at the Gooderham & Worts

Gooderham and Worts

Gooderham and Worts was a Canadian company that was once the largest distiller of alcoholic beverages in Canada. Its former manufacturing facilities on the Toronto Waterfront are today the well known Distillery District....

distilleries in Toronto would cut off the customers to the west, while the Midland Railway

Midland Railway of Canada

The Midland Railway of Canada was a historical Canadian railway which ran from Port Hope, Ontario to Midland on Georgian Bay.-Early days:This railway was originally conceived as a rail link between Port Hope and Peterborough and the company was originally named The Peterborough and Port Hope...

to Port Hope would do the same to the east. These developments had the potential to make the entire Reach area a has-been economically.

Original route

Port Perry, however, was ideally located to gather materials from a considerable area due to its lakeside location on Lake Scugog, which had connections to the Trent-Severn Waterway

Trent-Severn Waterway

The Trent–Severn Waterway is a Canadian canal system formerly used for industrial and transportation purposes and now for recreational and tourism purposes, connecting Lake Ontario at Trenton to the Georgian Bay portion of Lake Huron at Port Severn...

that offered easy access to large areas of northern Ontario. If a railway was built to the lakeshore, barges could carry produce to Port Perry and then be quickly trans-shipped southward. Serious efforts to build a line to Port Perry started in 1867, led by the efforts of Joseph Bigelow and Thomas Paxton, men of some import in Port Perry.

Each of the towns took part in the decision on the exact route, which was uncontentious to the south but a matter of some concern within Reach. Adam Gordon, at one time a Canadian Member of Parliament

Parliament of Canada

The Parliament of Canada is the federal legislative branch of Canada, seated at Parliament Hill in the national capital, Ottawa. Formally, the body consists of the Canadian monarch—represented by her governor general—the Senate, and the House of Commons, each element having its own officers and...

, wanted the line to pass through Manchester, where he lived and was very active in local politics. Joshua Wright, a famed orator, wanted the line to pass near a tannery outside of Prince Albert. Bigelow and Paxton argued the case for Port Perry. A route was finally decided on, making all of the towns happy, running just south of Manchester and Prince Albert with the terminus on the shore of Lake Scugog in Port Perry.

Bigelow and Paxton gathered a Provisional Board of Directors which included W.S. Sexton, Chester Draper, John Ham Perry, James Holden and Sheriff Reynolds. Bigelow was named president of the company. A charter was secured 4 March 1868 and fundraising activities began. Each of the towns on the route put up money for the construction; $50,000 from Whitby Town (today's Whitby), $20,000 from Whitby Township, $30,000 from Reach Township. Part of the deal with Whitby was that the existing toll structure on the gravel road from Whitby to Port Albert would be dropped.

Additionally, the railway argued that the Lindsay Lock on the Trent-Severn should be rebuilt; it had been converted into a log slide in 1859. Access from Lindsay to the south was an important part of the Midland Railway's plan of business, connecting to the mainlines in Port Hope

Port Hope, Ontario

. The newly-formed Government of Canada

Government of Canada

The Government of Canada, formally Her Majesty's Government, is the system whereby the federation of Canada is administered by a common authority; in Canadian English, the term can mean either the collective set of institutions or specifically the Queen-in-Council...

refused to fund the effort, stating that they did not want to get involved in what appeared to be a turf-war between the PW&PP and the Midland Railway. They turned the question over to the Ontario legislature, where it found strong support from Toronto as it would cut the shipping distance from Lindsay to Toronto by 90 miles. The Midland Railway, unsurprisingly, opposed rebuilding the Lock, and proposed a plan to build a bridge "to interfere with the Navigation of the River to prevent the passage of Lumber and other freight through to the proposed Port Whitby and Port Perry Railway.". The PW&PP eventually took over the work itself, Midland's bridge never having been built.

An official sod-turning ceremony was eventually made on 6 October 1869 by Prince Arthur

Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn

Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn was a member of the shared British and Saxe-Coburg and Gotha royal family who served as the Governor General of Canada, the 10th since Canadian Confederation.Born the seventh child and third son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and...

. The contract for building the railroad itself was originally given to J. H. Drumble of Cobourg with a roadbed using Broad gauge

Broad gauge

Broad-gauge railways use a track gauge greater than the standard gauge of .- List :For list see: List of broad gauges, by gauge and country- History :...

, which was then known as Provincial Gauge. They were forced into bankruptcy and sold the contract to C. E. English of Toronto. They restarted

Gauge conversion

In rail transport, gauge conversion is the process of converting a railway from one rail gauge to another, through the alteration of the railway tracks...

the line at standard gauge

Standard gauge

The standard gauge is a widely-used track gauge . Approximately 60% of the world's existing railway lines are built to this gauge...

, but got in a dispute with the railway and abandoned further work when the company could not pay for the work rendered. The company was now short of funds, and Bigelow decided to add in additional $40,000, although that required him to give up the presidency of the company.

Southern portions were completed on 31 August 1870, and opened for traffic in July 1871. The first trains were able to reach the southern end of Reach in November 1871, and the first train arrived in Port Perry on in the spring of 1872. The railway was poorly built and constantly needed repair. The poor foundation of the roadbed often led to the engine sinking in the marshy area between High Point and Manchester. The hills of the Oak Ridges Moraine

Oak Ridges Moraine

The Oak Ridges Moraine is an ecologically important geological landform in the Mixedwood Plains of south-central Ontario, Canada. The moraine covers a geographic area of between Caledon and Rice Lake, near Peterborough...

south of Reach gave the railway it's nickname, because it was "nip n' tuck" whether or not it could make its way up the grade when loaded. A ride from Port Perry to the mainlines at Whitby was 70 cents and took about one hour.

In spite of any problems, as Peter Perry had earlier predicted, the railway turned Port Perry into the center of Reach Township. Business quickly moved out of Manchester and Prince Albert, and in a few years Prince Albert nearly turned into a ghost town, leaving only a general store, a post office and a blacksmith. As Port Perry grew the original alignment of Simcoe Street was changed to run through Port Perry instead of Prince Albert, and today Prince Albert is effectively the southern portion of Port Perry.

Extension

In 1873 the company sold out to James Austin (president of The Dominion Bank

The Dominion Bank

The Dominion Bank was a Canadian bank based in Toronto and incorporated in 1869 that merged on February 1, 1955 with the Bank of Toronto to form the Toronto-Dominion Bank. -History:...

), James Michie and James Holden. The three had big plans for the railway, and re-named the company the "Whitby & Port Perry Extension Railway" (W&PPE), with rights to build to Gravenhurst

Gravenhurst, Ontario

Gravenhurst is a town in the Muskoka Region of Ontario, Canada. It is located approximately south of Bracebridge, Ontario. The mayor is Paisley Donaldson...

, the Muskoka River

Muskoka River

The Muskoka River is a river in the Muskoka District of Ontario, Canada.It rises in the highlands of Algonquin Park and flows southwest through a number of lakes including*Lake Muskoka*Lake Joseph*Lake Rosseau*Lake of Bays...

and beyond. The company already owned two steamships on Lake Scugog, the Ogemah and Victoria, which had benefitted greatly from the PW&PP and the traffic it drove on the Lake.

In 1874 the company scaled back their plans, with a new termination in Lindsay, becoming the "Whitby, Port Perry & Lindsay Railway". Port Perry put up $20,000 for the extension, only to find that much business left the town as a result. The eventual cost of the railway was over one million dollars, and despite all the bonuses, federal and provincial subsidies, with $600,000 in bonds the company was too heavily indebted to ever become really profitable.

After the railway was extended, other operating companies started watching the books until the company was able to show a margin of profit. As soon as this happened, the Midland Railway

Midland Railway of Canada

bought the company in 1881, joining it to their line from Port Hope to Lindsay. They leased the competing T&N the same year, before leasing their entire road system to the Grand Trunk Railway

Grand Trunk Railway

The Grand Trunk Railway was a railway system which operated in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario, as well as the American states of Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The railway was operated from headquarters in Montreal, Quebec; however, corporate...

(GTR) in 1884.

Demise

In spite of early hopes, and some success, the line was never very profitable. Low quality of the roadbed made for poor reliability and continual maintenance. As Canadian railways consolidated many routes through the area became superfluous, and this was the eventual fate of the WPP&L. The GTR, by this time part of Canadian National Railways, used the line less and less, and eventually ended scheduled service.

The last service to run on the line was a special passenger-only service to Toronto to bring well-wishers to the Royal Tour of 1939

Royal tours of Canada in the 20th century

There was an extended royal presence in Canada through the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, either as an official tour, a vacation, a period of military service, or a viceregal posting by a member of the Royal Family. Originally, official tours were events predominantly for Canadians to see and...

by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II. The war was only months away at this point, and as Canada entered the war effort the railway was eventually sold as scrap, its rails fed into steel mills for the war effort.

Route

The PW&PP ran almost due north from a dock at Port Whitby to its own two-storey station in Whitby, then northward through stations at Brooklin, Myrtle, south of Manchester, south of Prince Albert and finally to Port Perry. The WPP&L extension to Lindsay added stations at Seagrave, Sonya, Cresswell, Mariposa and Ops, before joining the Midland Railway in Lindsay. When the competing T&N added an extension between Manilla and Wick in 1883, a connecting spur was added to the WPP&L between Blackwater and Cresswell, along with the Manilla Junction station. In Lindsay, the WPP&L joined with the Victoria Railway at Union Station.

The section from Port Perry to Manilla Junction was abandoned in 1937, leaving traffic from Lindsay on the spur to the T&N, which remained in operation until 1991. The rest of the line southward from Port Perry was pulled up shortly thereafter in 1941. The main station in Port Perry was later moved from its original position on the lakeshore to a nearby intersection at Queen Street and Water Street. This location is currently under development by Shopper's Drug Mart, and the town councilors have demanded that any development must incorporate the station.

Although the last portions of the main railbed were removed in 1941, most of the route can be seen in aerial and satellite photography to this day. It is particularly prominent as it runs northwest out of Port Perry before turning northeast towards Lindsay. A small portion of the former railbed forms Old Rail Line in Port Perry, just north of the final location of the station.

Background

Original route

Extension

Demise

Route

Further reading