Grand Trunk Railway - Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge, Victoria Bridge, St. Clair Tunnel, Cobourg and Peterborough Railway, SS City of Milwaukee (Paperback)

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge, Victoria Bridge, St. Clair Tunnel, Cobourg and Peterborough Railway, Ss City of Milwaukee, Niagara Falls, Ontario Railway Station. Excerpt: The Cobourg and Peterborough Railway was one of the first rail lines to be built in Central Ontario, Canada, having been founded in 1834 as the Cobourg Railway Company. The line was proposed to extend from Cobourg to Peterborough, though plans for construction were constantly put on hold or shelved until 1846, particularly due to the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837 . The railroad was finally constructed as the "Cobourg and Rice Lake Plank Road and Ferry Company" by Samuel Gore and was 17 km in length, reaching the shores of Rice Lake, but the railway barely survived the first two winters it faced. The Cobourg and Rice Lake Plank Road and Ferry Company was fairly successful, using a plank road and ferry to cross Rice Lake, delivering lumber from the newly-founded town of Peterborough to the port in Cobourg, but ran into financial difficulties.The wooden causeway The Cobourg and Peterborough Railway was the successor company that was incorporated in 1852, and had the railroad extended along a 5 kilometer (3 mile) single-tracked wooden trestle bridge across Rice Lake . Construction started in 1853, but was halted due to a cholera epidemic among the German immigrants who signed up to work at the construction sites. The bridge was constructed in the summer of 1854, was completed on November 19, and, opened for use on December 29, 1854. At the time, it was one of the longest trestle bridges in North America . The main bridge started in Harwood, Ontario and continued towards Tic Island, and consisted of a long trestle set on piles, with 33 truss spans (24 m each) and a 36 m swing section in the navigation between...