Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company

[5][6] Despite government urging, railway companies laid no new track on the Prairies during 1893–1895 owing to low returns on the capital investment.

However, he discovered Donald Mann, a railway construction contractor, who seeking work, expressed merit in the plan.

[7] Mann purchased the LMR charter for $38,000, but to facilitate bank and government financing, he was obliged to take on a strong partner.

[6] Joined by William Mackenzie with whom he had worked on Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) construction, this was their first major collaboration.

The provincial guarantee, supplementing adequate federal aid for a line that cost only $7,000 a mile to build, prompted ongoing controversy.

[15] Two years later, the completion of the Winnipeg–Portage la Prairie telegraph wires connected Winnipeg with the LMR network.

[16] In November, the construction headquarters moved from Gladstone to Dauphin,[17] and work ceased for the season when the 163-kilometre (101 mi) line reached its temporary terminus at Sifton (which activated the federal transportation contract).

[22] That month, David Blyth Hanna was appointed superintendent, and Theodore Arthur Burrows land commissioner for the railway.

[23] Burrows was Clifford Sifton's brother-in-law, as was S. Jacks, who was later appointed as Mackenzie and Mann's purchasing agent.

[24] In summer 1897, the line advanced northeast via the future Sifton Junction, Fork River and Gruber to the Winnipegosis terminus.

[33] Claims that the line was profitable from its first year onward likely reflected the weaker accounting standards of the era.

[47] Although the Waterhen River indirectly links to Lake Manitoba, the absence of a suitable connecting channel had previously limited development.

[51] To resolve CNoR's dire financial predicament, the federal government effectively took control of the company in 1917,[52] and it later merged into Canadian National Railway (CNR).

With only a weekly freight train to the Winnipegosis grain elevator, the 16.7-kilometre (10.4 mi) Fork River–Winnipegosis section was ordered abandoned, effective March 14, 1983.