Business interests in Belleville naturally felt their own city was a better location to service the fields, and chartered the B&NHR in 1874.

The company was formed with a total stock purchase of $17,000 that summer, and several thousand dollars of additional money was spent on a survey of the route as far as the Moore iron mine in Madoc.

[4][a] At some point the owners of the Belleville-based Grand Junction Railway purchased the B&NHR, using it as their approach to Belleville on their Peterborough-Belleville route.

Progress on the original route did not begin again for a decade, by which time their proposed areas of operation were being served by the Central Ontario Railway.

Instead, the company started looking in other directions, and settled on a route to Lindsay, where they hoped to capture some of the lucrative grain trade from the Georgian Bay area.

This represented a serious threat to the Midland Railway, whose line was one of the few that offered access to the Great Lakes without routing through an increasingly congested Toronto.

[11] Both subdivisions operated profitably for many years, forming CN's eastern mainline into Peterborough as well as continuing to serve various industries and passenger routes around Madoc.

[9] The rail trail currently ends at Ontario Highway 7 in Madoc, the section north to Eldorado having long ago returned to farmland and bush.

The Junction was just north of Tuftsville Road, just west of Ontario Highway 62 about 6 km due east of Stirling.

The line runs northeast from the junction, crossing Rawdon Creek at West Huntingdon Station on Moira Road.

From the bridge, the route turns slightly west, entering Madoc on the western side of town and crossing St. Lawrence Street at an angle.

From there it gradually forms a series of larger curves as it reaches rougher terrain, crossing O'Hara Road several times.