Bytown and Prescott Railway

At the time the town's only connections with the world were via dirt road, the Ottawa River to Montreal and the Rideau Waterway to Kingston.

The first mention of a rail link to the St. Lawrence River dates to 1848,[2] Railways were developing in the United States at this point, and there were plans for a line to Ogdensburg, New York, directly opposite Prescott.

[4] At the northern end of the proposed route, the natural location for the terminus would be just upstream of the Chaudière Falls, where logs could be loaded directly off the river onto trains.

Only a few hundred meters upstream the river widened on the southern bank, forming a wide area of calm water with the small inlet of Nepean Bay in the southeastern corner.

This area had originally been selected for the Rideau Canal, but a land swindle led to it being moved to a far less advantageous location downstream from the Chaudière Falls.

Thomas McKay offered to buy a considerable proportion of the shares in exchange for moving the northern terminus to industrial land he owned in New Edinburgh, further down the Ottawa River.

[2] Even with this infusion of cash there was not enough money; further funds were eventually raised from the towns along the proposed routes, which would be paid to the railway as a bonus on completion.

[5] The endpoints of the railway were effectively selected before surveying began; the southern terminus would be at the docks in Prescott, while the northern end would be in New Edinburgh.

[2] At this point an odd dispute broke out between the railway and the Grand Trunk Telegraph Company, which had laid poles along the route.

Passenger service from Bytown opened at the end of the month, starting with a steamer ride down the Rideau Canal to Beckett's Landing, then a short distance by stage coach to the station in Kemptville.

However, the bridge over the Rideau south of Green Island, from the eastern New Edinburgh side of the river to the downtown area, was not completed at this time.

There is considerable oral history stating that the St. Lawrence arrived at Sussex on Christmas Day 1854, with Robert Graham as engineer and Mike Mahar as fireman.

However, there are also published accounts stating that the trains still stopped at Montreal Road on that same day, and passengers were carried to Sussex on horse drawn cabs.

[3] One persistent rumour about the railway is that the company once again ran out of money just after reaching Billings, and the rest of the rails were initially laid as "snakeheads", wooden beams capped with iron.

[7] Although the story was known to be false even at that time, it continues to be repeated in new works, as recently as Donald Wilson's book from 1984, "The Ontario and Quebec Railway".

Stones for the buildings were quarried outside of Cleveland, Ohio, and shipped to Ottawa through Prescott on a scheduled train that ran every day for three years.

[citation needed] Following its completion, financial difficulties ensued leading to decisions for the raising to funds to pay the debts.

[6] On 13 December 1871 the new company completed a spur that ran northwest from a location south of Billings Bridge christened "Chaudière Junction", to the new Broad Street Station close to the current City Center Ave and Albert St.

This spur followed the original planned B&PR route quite closely, finally providing freight service upstream from the Chaudière Falls at Nepean Bay.

[2] The Canadian Pacific Railway began to examine the St. Lawrence and Ottawa as early 1881 and a formal 999-year lease was signed on 26 September 1884.

[8] These plans were put astray when the bridge over the canal near Billings was itself rendered unsafe and traffic on the Chaudière branch was closed on 5 September 1882.

The Rideau bridge was once again re-built and opened on 10 June 1889, this time having been raised in an attempt to fix problems with ice, although these proved to be futile.

The station was given a new lease on life due to it being a convenient location for inbound coal shipments, as well as the newly opened sawmills which provided cut lumber downstream from Chaudière.

In the post-war era, the National Capital Commission wanted to abandon many of the lines in the downtown area as part of their efforts to beautify the city.

The original route can easily be seen as the smoothly curving line of trees just west of the Lake, running southeast out of Carling Station and continuing through the Carleton University campus.

As part of the original plans, a large parking lot was constructed some distance to the south of the Airport, acting as a suburban collector point.

In terms of serving the airport itself, a spur at Lester Road continues to be used to supply freight cars to the National Research Council buildings.

In 1851, Walter Shanly, Chief Engineer, started construction, and a train first ran from Prescott to Bytown on Christmas Day, 1854.