The Victoria Railway Completed to Haliburton, 1878
Once Fenelon Falls separated from Fenelon Township in June 1874 to vote a subsidy to build the Lindsay, Fenelon Falls and Ottawa River Railway, it did not take long for work to begin. Ground was broken in August, and two years later a fixed railway bridge was being constructed across the Fenelon River, immediately beside Maryboro Lodge (it was rebuilt as a swing bridge after the construction of the canal). The railway opened to Kinmount on November 9, 1876. For its first year of regular service, it operated two locomotives (Lindsay and S.C. Wood), fifty freight cars and four or five coaches. That same year, it received permission to extend its line from the head of William Street in Lindsay down Victoria Avenue to Russell Street, where it made a Union Station with the Lindsay & Whitby Railway. William and Alexander Mackenzie built the Kinmount station and engine house, as well as some bridges—William Mackenzie's first job in his notable railway construction career.
While the Victoria Railway initially advertised locally for labourers, it quickly resorted to bringing in 365 Icelanders, along with a few Swedes who started work soon after the onset of construction. Though many were ill with dysentery when they arrived (over 100 died, especially children) and only one of the party spoke English, they persevered, living around Kinmount in unfortunate circumstances while they laboured on the track. Missionary John Taylor petitioned the government to grant them aid, and a number relocated in 1875 to settle at Gimli, Manitoba.
Constructing the southern end of the Victoria Railway was fairly straightforward, as it followed the Scugog River and northwest shore of Sturgeon Lake much of the way to Fenelon Falls. Though it required a few rock cuts, filling a stretch three thousand feet long at McLaren's Creek, and a $20,000 bridge at Fenelon Falls, much of the land was relatively level, and the grades were often easily achieved just by skimming off the topsoil. To ballast the road, the company used a steam shovel named the Steam Irishman that moved 600 to 800 yards of gravel daily. But north of Kinmount, the route was far more challenging. Many rock cuts and trestle bridges were necessary, and a sink hole about four miles north of Kinmount continually surprised planners with the quantity of fill that disappeared. Crews resorted to driving piles into the mire to keep the track up.
By 1878, the railway was complete to Haliburton, and on November 26, a locomotive pulled in for the opening gala. It passed through an arch pronouncing that it brought "National Prosperity" and "Progress." In hindsight, this event marked the completion of the Victoria Railway, but at the time local boosters were still expecting the line to be completed through to Mattawa on the Ottawa River. But as the sinkholes were filled and rock cuts made between Kinmount and Haliburton, it became clear that completing the line through what is now Algonquin Park to reach Mattawa would be very expensive. The promoters continued to demand funding to complete the railway, but they were never able to generate anywhere near the necessary amount.
It did not take long for the line to be renamed the Victoria Railway, reflecting its actual extent. In 1880 it was taken over by the Midland Railway, which built a Fenelon Falls station on the south side of Lindsay Street, two years later. The new station soon led to complaints that it was too close to the road, blocking traffic when trains pulled in. The Midland Railway was later amalgamated into the Grand Trunk Railway, then the Canadian National Railway.
The iron horse was transformative to many communities along its route. In the 1880s and 1890s, Fenelon Falls was home to the Red Mill, the largest sawmill on the Upper Trent Watershed, built on the south side of the Falls and served by the railway (it was larger than Mossom Boyd’s more famous Bobcaygeon mills). Lumber was bulky to transport and laborious to pile and repile. Without the railway, it is unlikely that the Red Mill would have ever expanded to that extent. Many communities along the line literally owed their existence to the railway, as trade and passengers concentrated around its stations.
The railway employed many workers, especially at Lindsay. It did not take long for the Haliburton sink hole to begin swallowing the track once again, as section crews were continually filling in under the rails all along the line to keep them level. The company hired clerks, freight handlers, maintenance crews, engineers and yard hands. As was often the case in the nineteenth century many of the jobs were dangerous. Until air brakes were employed, men manually clubbed the brake wheels to stop trains. To do this, and to switch cars, labourers were expected to climb on, off or between moving cars. Braking and coupling cars, were both notoriously risky jobs. Missing fingers was often taken as proof of railway experience. Despite the dangers, many farm boys (especially from Haliburton where shallow, rocky soils limited the returns from agriculture) were eager to secure a job on the railway. It was an escape from the constant manual labour that went into farming. The railway opened a whole continent of possibilities—it could carry you almost anywhere in North America!
