Narrow-gauge railways in Canada
These were generally less expensive to build, but were more vulnerable to frost heaving because vertical displacement of one rail caused greater angular deflection of the narrower two-rail running surface.
By 2015, the only remaining narrow-gauge system in Canada was the White Pass and Yukon Route, which used some of the rolling stock of the Newfoundland Railway which closed in the late 1980s.
Interchange with the North American system did not improve the traffic levels and even the CNR started to move its own freight increasingly by truck.
It did so, and completed the conversion to 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) during the 1920s and early 1930s after the island's rail system was linked to North America by a standard-gauge railcar ferry beginning in 1917.
The first narrow-gauge railway in Canada was not a common carrier, but the 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) Lingan Colliery Tramway built in 1861 on Cape Breton Island north of Sydney.
The Lake Champlain and St. Lawrence Junction Railway commenced operation in the Richelieu River valley between Stanbridge and Saint-Guillaume in October 1879.
Wragge returned to Britain between 1895 and 1905 and was honoured by the award of the Telford Gold Medal of the Institution of Civil Engineers for his work on the approach to and construction of the London (Marylebone) terminus of the Great Central Railway.
Although independent of each other financially, they were promoted and engineered by the same men and were in fact connected by a short length of third rail in the Toronto waterfront trackage of the Grand Trunk Railway.
These Ontario railways attempted several innovations in addition to the adoption of the narrow gauge: the use of Clark’s six wheel radial axles for longer stock – a complete failure and never used; the use of four wheel boxcars for economy and flexibility – not entirely successful; the use of large Fairlie articulated 0-6-6-0 freight locomotives (see illustration) – found very powerful and useful initially, but heavy on maintenance and not pursued further; and the early use of powerful Avonside Engine Company 4-6-0 and Baldwin Locomotive Works 2-8-0 locomotives for freight haulage – very successful engines which remained in service with the Canadian Pacific Railway after gauge standardization.
Then, after they had bought large numbers of additional freight locomotives and boxcars, the traffic fell off due to the economic depression of the mid-1870s and was insufficient to support the heavy financial burden of the capital invested.
Another tourist line, the Portage Flyer, operates at the Muskoka Heritage Place museum complex in Huntsville, and runs on .75 miles (1.21 km) of 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) narrow-gauge track.
The WPYR was built as a common carrier but closed in 1982 only to reopen in 1988 to haul tourists from cruise ships docking at Skagway, Alaska through White Pass on the Canada–United States border to Bennett, British Columbia, and more recently onto Carcross, Yukon.
[citation needed] Other small industrial lines used narrow gauge for a few years—the Kitsault Mine, and the Western Peat operation in Burns Bog.
An extensive narrow-gauge line was built in the foothills to haul coal about 1890 but was soon re-gauged to standard and the equipment moved to the Kaslo and Slocan in BC.
The North Western Coal and Navigation Company, constructed a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow-gauge line which began operations from Lethbridge to Dunmore, Alberta beginning in the fall of 1885.
In 1915, Canadian Pacific Railway split the Train Station in half and hauled their portion north across the Canada–United States border and continued to use it until the late 1960s when it was closed.
