Bay of Quinte Railway

The Bay of Quinte Railway, originally an 1881 Deseronto, Ontario short line and later a successor to the 1879 Napanee, Tamworth and Quebec Railway, formed part of Edward Rathbun's Bay of Quinte Railway and Navigation Company which served the family's local milling and shipping empire.^[2] Initially constructed to bring timber from inland locations to ships in Deseronto,^[3] it was acquired by the Canadian Northern Railway in 1910 for inclusion in that company's Ottawa-Toronto mainline. That line was built through Smiths Falls and Sydenham, incorporating the existing BQR track from Sydenham to Napanee-Deseronto, then continued westward through Trenton to Toronto.

After CNoR's 1918 bankruptcy, the CNoR line became part of Canadian National which gradually abandoned it over many decades. The last BQR fragment, from Napanee's historic 1856 Grand Trunk station to a Goodyear tyre factory, was disconnected from the CN mainline at Napanee station in 2010.^[4]

History

In 1848, an American partnership purchased land near Culbertson's Wharf, building a sawmill to process logs from four million acres of timberland in the Trent River, Moira River, Salmon River and Napanee River watersheds. In 1855, Hugo Burghardt Rathbun moved to the area to take over the running of the business under the Rathbun Company name. The growing village was incorporated in 1871 as Mill Point and was renamed Deseronto in 1881. Hugo's son, Edward Wilkes Rathbun expanded the company's enterprises, opening a cedar mill, a flour mill and a sash, door and blind factory; he operated tugboats and lake freighters to carry cargo to Oswego, New York. He later added four passenger ships and, by the 1880s, held a stake in three railways: the Bay of Quinte Railway, the Napanee and Tamworth Railway and Gananoque's Thousand Islands Railway. He operated a 250-acre farm to provide horses for the logging operations and railway car shops to build rolling stock, along with general stores, a newspaper and various manufacturing works.^[5] At its 1895 peak, Deseronto's population reached 3338 people and Edward Wilkes Rathbun was a millionaire; an 1896 fire on the timber docks did a quarter million dollars damage and gradual depletion of natural resources (timber and minerals) on which the Rathbun business relied brought the company's activities to a halt by 1916. The Bay of Quinte railway, originally constructed to bring Rathbun's timber to market, was sold to Canadian Northern Railway in 1910 for inclusion in their Ottawa-Toronto mainline. CNoR reached the Pacific coast by 1915, but by 1918 was bankrupt. Canadian National took over the CNoR network in 1923, embargoing the former BQR mainline in 1979 and removing the tracks in 1986.

Network

Bay of Quinte Railway Engine #5 and its crew, about to leave Napanee for Deseronto, c1900-1903.

The BQR was constructed in multiple segments:

• The Bay of Quinte Navigation and Railway Company's own line ran from Napanee to Deseronto. It originally carried freight from Rathbun's steamships "Deseronto" and "Quinte", which ran Napanee-Deseronto-Picton, to the Grand Trunk Railway mainline.^[6]
• Rathbun was one of multiple stakeholders in a 1879 Napanee, Tamworth and Quebec Railway which continued from Napanee to Tamworth, connecting to the Grand Trunk Railway in Napanee. The line was extended to Tweed before running out of money, but never reached Ottawa-Hull. Renamed the Kingston, Napanee and Western, it was leased to the BQR; the NT&Q and BQR lines were eventually merged.^[2]
• An 1889 extension from Tamworth to Harrowsmith allowed connection to the Kingston and Pembroke Railway to reach Kingston.
• An 1893 extension from Harrowsmith reached mica mines at Sydenham Lake.
• A 1902 branch line joined the BQR mainline at Yarker to the Central Ontario Railway at Bannockburn, Ontario.^[2]

CNoR incorporated the BQR line into its own mainline to Smiths Falls; CN abandoned the Tweed to Bannockburn line in 1935 and Tweed to Yarker in 1941, leaving just the Smiths Falls mainline. That line was embargoed in 1979, abandoned in 1984 and removed in 1986. The 104 kilometres (65 mi) right of way from Smiths Falls to Strathcona, near Napanee, is now the Cataraqui Trail, a multi-use recreational trail operated by the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority.^[7]

The Bay of Quinte Navigation and Railway Company also owned the Rathbun dock in Gananoque, Ontario; it entered a contract in which that town raised $10,000 in debentures in return for a short line to be constructed from GTR's Gananoque railway station to the downtown waterfront. This Thousand Islands Railway is now defunct, but one locomotive has been preserved at the former station beside Gananoque's town hall.^[8]

Incidents

1892 collision between two BQR engines

An 1892 McCord Museum archival photo depicts a head-on collision between two Bay of Quinte Railway engines.

On October 2, 1912, a BQR train derailed on a curve on the K&P line five miles north of Kingston, sending the second car from the engine and four freight cars, the mail car and a passenger car down a 12–15 foot embankment, killing two passengers. The engine reached Kingston unharmed.^[9]

Legacy

The BQR is a ghost rail line and very little remains to mark its role as a connecting link in CNoR's ultimately failed ambition to build a third viable national rail network. On most of the former Smiths Falls - Deseronto CNoR line, the tracks were removed in the 1980s.^[10][11] CNoR's Smiths Falls station became the Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario; a few BQR stations in small villages were converted to private residences.^[2]

References

Further reading

• Donald M. Wilson (1983). Lost Horizons: The Story of the Rathbun Company and the Bay of Quinte Railway, Its Inception, Its Rise to Prominence, a Period of Growth and Stability, and the Decline (200 pages). Mika Publishing Company. ISBN 9780919303737. 
• Deseronto Archives' photographs of the Bay of Quinte Railway