The Bay of Quinte Railway was a short-line railway in eastern

Ontario, Canada Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

. It was formed as the Napanee, Tamworth and Quebec Railway (NT&QR), chartered in 1878 by Edward Rathbun and Alexander Campbell, with plans to run from

Napanee Greater Napanee is a town in southeastern Ontario, Canada, approximately west of Kingston and the county seat of Lennox and Addington County. It is located on the eastern end of the Bay of Quinte. Greater Napanee municipality was created by a ...

through Renfrew County and on to the

Ottawa Valley The Ottawa Valley is the valley of the Ottawa River, along the boundary between Eastern Ontario and the Outaouais, Quebec, Canada. The valley is the transition between the Saint Lawrence Lowlands and the Canadian Shield. Because of the surrou ...

. Lacking funding from the governments, development never began. Rathburn took over the charter in 1881. He started construction with the shorter Bay of Quinte Railway and Navigation Company (BQR&NC) that ran from his factories in

Deseronto Deseronto is a town in the Canadian province of Ontario, in Hastings County, located at the mouth of the Napanee River on the shore of the Bay of Quinte, on the northern side of Lake Ontario. The town was named for Captain John Deseronto, a n ...

to the

Grand Trunk Railway The Grand Trunk Railway (; french: Grand Tronc) was a railway system that operated in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario and in the American states of Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The rail ...

mainline at Napanee. Construction on the NT&QR out of Napanee through Yarkers to Tamworth started the same year, but was abandoned by the contractor and Rathburn had to pay the workers out of pocket. The line finally opened to Tamworth in 1884. In 1889 it was extended westward to

Tweed Tweed is a rough, woollen fabric, of a soft, open, flexible texture, resembling cheviot or homespun, but more closely woven. It is usually woven with a plain weave, twill or herringbone structure. Colour effects in the yarn may be obtained ...

while a branch eastward from Yarker to Harrowsmith connected to the

Kingston and Pembroke Railway The Kingston and Pembroke Railway (K&P) was a Canadian railway that operated in eastern Ontario. The railway was seen as a business opportunity which would support the lumber and mining industries, as well as the agricultural economy in eastern On ...

with running rights to Kingston. In 1890 the line was renamed the Kingston, Napanee & Western Railway, and the next year it was leased to the BQR&NC. The eastern branch was extended from Harrowsmith to Sydenham in 1893. In 1897, the two sections were legally merged into the newly formed Bay of Quinte Railway. In 1903 the final expansion was made northwestward from Tweed to connect to the Central Ontario Railway at Bannockburn, with a total of . The line was purchased by the

Canadian Northern Railway The Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) was a historic Canadian transcontinental railway. At its 1923 merger into the Canadian National Railway , the CNoR owned a main line between Quebec City and Vancouver via Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. Man ...

(CNoR) in 1910, using its line from Napanee through Sydenham as the basis of a major expansion to

Smiths Falls Smiths Falls is a town in Eastern Ontario, Canada, southwest of Ottawa. As of the 2021 census it has a population of 9,254. It is in the Census division for Lanark County, but is separated from the county. The Rideau Canal waterway passes thr ...

and onto

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the c ...

. CNoR's bankruptcy in 1918, followed by the Grand Trunk in 1923 led to the formation of the

Canadian National Railways The Canadian National Railway Company (french: Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux du Canada) is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. C ...

(CNR). Parts of the network were closed starting in 1935, and the last BQR fragment, from Napanee's historic 1856 Grand Trunk station to a Goodyear tire factory, was disconnected from the CN mainline at Napanee station in 2010.

History

In 1848, an American partnership purchased land near Culbertson's Wharf, building a

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logging, logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes ...

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

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

tugboat A tugboat or tug is a marine vessel that manoeuvres other vessels by pushing or pulling them, with direct contact or a tow line. These boats typically tug ships in circumstances where they cannot or should not move under their own power, su ...

s and lake freighters to carry cargo to

Oswego, New York Oswego () is a city in Oswego County, New York, United States. The population was 16,921 at the 2020 census. Oswego is located on Lake Ontario in Upstate New York, about 35 miles (55km) northwest of Syracuse. It promotes itself as "The Port ...

. 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 Gananoque ( ) is a town in the Leeds and Grenville area of Ontario, Canada. The town had a population of 5,383 year-round residents in the 2021 Canadian Census, as well as summer residents sometimes referred to as "Islanders" because of the Tho ...

'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. 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 on damage, and the 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

in 1910 for inclusion in its Ottawa-Toronto mainline. CNoR reached the Pacific coast by 1915, but by 1918, it was bankrupt.

Canadian National The Canadian National Railway Company (french: Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux du Canada) is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN ...

took over the CNoR network in 1923, embargoing the former BQR mainline in 1979 and removing the tracks in 1986.

Network

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

mainline. * Rathbun was one of multiple stakeholders in an 1879 Napanee, Tamworth and Quebec Railway which continued from Napanee to Tamworth, connecting to the

in Napanee. The line was extended to

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. * An 1889 extension from Tamworth to Harrowsmith allowed connection to the

to reach Kingston. * An 1893 extension from Harrowsmith reached

mica Micas ( ) are a group of silicate minerals whose outstanding physical characteristic is that individual mica crystals can easily be split into extremely thin elastic plates. This characteristic is described as perfect basal cleavage. Mica is ...

mines at Sydenham Lake. * A 1902 branch line joined the BQR mainline at Yarker to the Central Ontario Railway at

Bannockburn, Ontario Madoc is a township in Hastings County in Eastern Ontario, Canada. The township was named after legendary Welsh prince Madoc ap Owain Gwynedd, credited by some with discovering North America in 1170. There exists an alternative explanation, ...

. 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 right of way from Smiths Falls to Strathcona, near

, is now the

Cataraqui Trail The Cataraqui Trail is a 104-km Rails-to-Trails multi-use linear recreational trail in Eastern Ontario, Canada. The route passes by farmland, woods, lakes, and wetlands. The trail begins southwest of Smiths Falls, at a parking lot south of Onta ...

, a multi-use recreational trail operated by the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority. 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.

Incidents

An 1892

McCord Museum The McCord Stewart Museum (french: Musée McCord Stewart) is a public research and teaching museum dedicated to the preservation, study, diffusion, and appreciation of Canadian history. The museum, whose full name is McCord Museum of Canadian His ...

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.

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. CNoR's Smiths Falls station became the

Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario The Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario, a rail museum in a former CNoR station, stands on the abandoned right-of-way of a Canadian Northern Railway line which once led southwest toward Napanee. Established 1985 as the Smiths Falls Railway Museum, ...

; a few BQR stations in small villages were converted to private residences.

References

Bibliography

* *

External links

Deseronto Archives' photographs of the Bay of Quinte Railway
{{Canada class 2 Railway companies established in 1879 Railway companies disestablished in 1910 Predecessors of the Canadian Northern Railway Defunct Ontario railways History of rail transport in Hastings County Rail transport in Frontenac County 1897 establishments in Ontario 1910 disestablishments in Ontario Canadian companies established in 1879 Standard gauge railways in Canada