Among those who travelled to the station with Zimmerman was Captain Henry Twohy. Although he had no reason to board the train he seemed to have been caught up in the general enthusiasm of the moment and, doubtless influenced by the flow of spirits that lubricated most business dealings of the time, he accepted the boisterous invitations of his friends to continue the celebration in Hamilton. Perhaps the sharp chill of the cab ride helped sober him a little or perhaps, as he later claimed, he really did remember previous commitments. In either case, he made his excuses, left the train, and almost certainly saved his own life.
By the time of this 1867 photograph the Great Western Railway’s Toronto station had been established at the foot of Yonge Street. Ten years earlier trains were departing from a temporary platform at Queen’s Quay, before the line was extended from the outskirts.
Public domain.
As departure time approached, the two passenger cars began to fill. The stuffy heat of the wood-burning stoves offered a welcome relief from the still-freezing mid-March temperatures on the unprotected platform. Among the other passengers was Thomas Street, a well-known financier and former member of Parliament. While Zimmerman would have contended he was the wealthiest man in Canada, some suspected the claim owed more to his flair for self-promotion. If Zimmerman wasn’t the richest Canadian, then Thomas C. Street might have been. Both Zimmermann and Street lived in Clifton (today Niagara Falls, Ontario), and both had been highly influential in the commercial development of that city. But there the similarity ended. Street was every inch the pragmatic and low-key patrician. Zimmerman, on the other hand, flaunted his deal-making triumphs and revelled in his influence. To use a modern-day analogy, contrast the quietly assured financier Warren Buffet with the personality of real-estate tycoon Donald Trump. Sam was “The Donald” of his time. Although the men obviously knew each other, Street chose to sit in the leading passenger car — Zimmerman in the rear car.
Among the other passengers was a well-known ship’s captain, turned wealthy shipping magnate, James Sutherland. Also boarding in Toronto were the recently married son of Hamilton’s first mayor, a number of off-duty railway officials, and a cross-section of the newly mobile public.
As the time for departure neared, engineer Alexander Burnfield dropped from the warmth of his cab and made the mandatory trip around the locomotive armed with a hammer, which he dutifully tapped against each of the wheels. The standard test of the cast-iron wheels relied on a clear bell tone to indicate soundness. If the metal was cracked — even if the blemish was not visible — the hammer would make a duller noise. The engineer was quickly satisfied that the engine passed the routine examination, hardly surprising since the imposing engine Oxford had only recently been returned to service after a complete overhaul.
Burnfield clambered back aboard and peered back through the escaping steam to await Conductor Barrett’s final bellowed “ALL ABOARD!” and permission to get underway. That received, he gave a last blast on his whistle and eased open the throttle.
The 4:10 to Hamilton was scarcely an express hell-bent for eternity. Scheduled at a respectable, albeit leisurely pace that would see it reach Hamilton roughly two hours later, it ambled over the flat plains north of Lake Ontario stopping at all local stations. Still, although advertised as an “accommodation” train, it was by no means intended to attract the rustic provincial traveller. The train consisted of a leading baggage car and two first-class cars. The Great Western was never mean in its accommodation — it was, after all, the first railway in the world to introduce a sleeping car.
Great Western Railway locomotive Spitfire, a contemporary to the ill-fated Oxford, was typical of the 4-4-0 locomotives built in North America during the early years of railroading.
U.S. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-93788.
Although most passengers intended to make the complete Toronto to Hamilton trip, the train stopped at Mimico, Port Credit, Oakville, Bronte, Wellington Square, and Waterdown to drop off or pick up passengers. At Wellington Square Alfred Booker climbed on board. Booker was a fire-and-brimstone evangelical Baptist, of the old school — a man who would not flinch from casting the mote from the eye of an offending brother. Every inch the archetypical Victorian cleric, the feisty Booker had presided over a late afternoon outreach ministry in neighboring Wellington (now a part of Burlington, Ontario) and was on his way home for a deserved rest. On the platform he would have passed a gentleman who stepped down to take a “breath of air,” though more likely he either felt the need to clear his head of the effects of the travellers’ comfort or to augment his supply. In either case, he was sufficiently befuddled that when the train left it did so without him. He might be excused if the thought of what might have become of him had he stayed abroad led him to drink. At that point, the majority of those on board had only about fifteen minutes to live.
A few minutes later the complement was approaching the boundary between modern-day Burlington and Hamilton, where the track layout became a little complex. The main line of the Great Western stretched from Niagara Falls to Windsor — the line between Toronto and Hamilton was an offshoot of that central route, added a few years later. The peculiar geography of the western end of Lake Ontario makes Hamilton a natural intermediate station along a straight line linking Niagara and the west. Building the line from Niagara to Hamilton was relatively easy. The direct approach to Hamilton, however, required some pretty heavy engineering.
The city sits at the mouth of the Dundas Valley — a giant cleft in the Niagara Escarpment, several miles across. This formation is riddled with small creeks gushing from the side of the almost vertical walls of the escarpment, like miniature Niagara Falls. Toward the western end of the valley’s mouth the creeks accumulate into the shallow marshland known as Cootes Paradise. At its eastern end, the valley exits into one of the very best natural harbours in the Great Lakes. Separating that harbour from both lake and marsh are two narrow ribbons of land. Closest to Lake Ontario is the “Beach Strip,” an exaggerated three-mile long sandbar that provides effective shelter from the storms of Lake Ontario. Between harbour and marsh, at the western end, is a more substantial formation known as the Burlington Heights. The Heights constitute a 300-foot-high natural embankment blocking most of the mouth of the Dundas Valley. At the northern end, however, it collapses into a swampy morass through which the waters of Cootes Paradise could seep into the bay.
To satisfy the financial interests of the line’s promoters, the engineers of the Great Western chose to approach the city along the northern boundary of Cootes Paradise. That entailed carving a rock ledge into the escarpment and gradually dropping the line so that it was only fifty to a hundred feet above the level of the lake at the point where the Heights fell off. Having skirted the Heights, the line could then be built just above water level, passing beneath Sir Allan MacNab’s elegant “castle” to the wharves and terminus at the western end of Hamilton Harbour.
Although the plan entailed some pretty heavy construction, the only major difficulty was dealing with the swampy ground where the Heights petered out. Through this spot the Desjardins Canal Company had expanded the Grindstone Creek to enable their boats to reach the harbour from Cootes Paradise. After abandoning an expensive attempt to bridge the swamp, the railway company made an offer. In exchange for the right to a solid embankment closing-off the canal company’s route, the railway would provide a new route by boldly cutting through the middle of the Heights. Part of this agreement required the Great Western