Of these, the first chartered was the Great Western Railway, which was completed in 1853-54 and connected Niagara Falls to Windsor via London and Hamilton, linking many contemporary centres of population, industry, and trade.

in 1855, a branch line was built to Toronto, which fell on the east side of the Grand River, connecting towns and villages in the area such as Galt, Hespeler, Preston, and Guelph.

This initial attempt to connect the two cities was short-lived, however, as the bridge was damaged by ice flows in January 1858, and the railway was operational for less than three months.

These systems were often also known as interurbans due to the appeal of easily connecting neighbouring cities together with a regional rail line, often municipally owned and operated.

In the same year, the Berlin and Waterloo Street Railway began to take steps to modernize its service by converting its horse cars to run on electric power.

This proved unsuitable and a consortium of local businessmen, impatient at the lack of progress, purchased the railway and outfitted it with new, purpose-built electric trams, which were manufactured in Peterborough.

[8] In 1908, the GP&H and Preston and Berlin Street Railway were merged under the BWW&LH name, thereby giving Canadian Pacific a means to enter the Kitchener freight market, while ostensibly following the letter of its agreement with the Grand Trunk.

[9] Throughout the rest of the 1920s, the Grand River Railway continued to shift to using shared freight track, a move which was hastened by municipal politicians working to force trains off of King Street in favour of car traffic.

Under unified CPEL management, the two services were advertised in tandem, and LE&N rolling stock received repairs at the Grand River Railway's Preston barn.

[11] The Lake Erie and Northern, with its longer line and lower ridership, advertised primarily for summer excursion trips to Port Dover from the hot and crowded urban centres to the north, and during other parts of the year was largely sustained by its freight business.

Around November 1937, the railway switched from whistles to horns at crossings, which were louder, leading to complaints from residents along the line and from the Waterloo town council.

[12] These incidents only continued after the end of the Great Depression and the Second World War, when automobile ownership and traffic volumes climbed steadily.

More reliable personal cars, as well as improved highway and automobile service infrastructure, made it easier to drive to unfamiliar cities whose street geometry (and railway operations) could prove dangerous.

[22] Despite the overall success of the combined CPEL railway system, post-Second World War social trends began to cause a drop in ridership as regional travellers became increasingly likely to own and drive cars.

The beginning of residential subdivision development stimulated population growth outside of the historic downtowns of Berlin (by then renamed to Kitchener), Galt, and Preston, and they began to fall victim to urban decay.

In the years following the 1919 Canada Highways Act, which provided stimulus funding for highway development, it became more practical and desirable to travel intercity by car, and development and urban planning began to adjust to car-centric transportation with road widening, highway development, creation of low-density residential housing subdivisions, and demolition of many urban buildings to provide parking, creating an induced demand feedback loop that favoured further car-centric development, while many railway systems were discontinued or statically maintained, without significant expansion of track, upgrades to rolling stock, or sometimes even basic maintenance; the Kitchener and Waterloo Street Railway, which had been put under the management of the Kitchener Public Utilities Commission, was rendered disabled even before its planned shutdown due to damage to the overhead electrical wires which was not repaired.

[24] It was around this time that Canadian Pacific began to plan for total abandonment of passenger services along the line, even as freight carloads and profitability increased.

[25] Passenger rail advocates at the time warned that these service cuts would eventually lead to complete abandonment, and protested to bodies such as the Kitchener City Council.

[38] It was used for at least one of the excursion trips by railway enthusiasts which occurred after the end of regular revenue service,[38] and was planned to be converted into a maintenance of way car or to be sold.

Had it been built, the extended line would have curved to the west through Erbsville, then north through Heidelberg, west again through St. Clements and Crosshill, and finally north again to Linwood to terminate at a junction with the CPR-owned Guelph and Goderich Railway, giving the Grand River Railway a second interchange point with the east–west Canadian Pacific lines in addition to the one with the mainline through Galt.

[46][47] The extended line would have run entirely to the west of the then-Grand Trunk-operated Waterloo Junction Railway to Elmira through St. Jacobs, and would have passed through a number of villages which did not have rail service.

While a distance away from Kitchener's main corridor of King Street, it was located in a then-rapidly-growing suburban neighbourhood dominated by St. Mary's General Hospital, which opened in 1924.

Urban sections in Kitchener-Waterloo were largely also dismantled in the 1980s and replaced by the Iron Horse Trail in 1997, which features a number of plaques commemorating Kitchener's railway and industrial heritage.

Perhaps most decisively, the junction that joined the GRNR and LE&N at Main Street in downtown Galt was also removed along with the LE&N track leading south to Paris, severing the original branch line laid down by the Great Western Railway in 1855, and ending rail traffic between the north and south halves of the Grand River valley.

A remnant of the Grand River Railway mainline, designated as the CP Waterloo Subdivision, remains an active rail corridor.

After curving to the north again, it terminates, joining with the CN Huron Park Spur at an interchange yard which is overlooked by the Block Line Ion light rail station.

[52] Ironically, this system (ION Stage 1) does not include either Galt or Preston, the original hubs for regional rail, and is instead centred on Kitchener-Waterloo.