If the first year of operation brought about many self-inflicted problems and difficulties, it also brought traffic and financial success exceeding all expectations. In fact, Scobie’s Canadian Almanac of 1854 reported that “the capabilities of the Great Western Railway are already strained in the endeavor to conduct the business which presses upon it from the West.”
Passenger traffic was especially heavy, with up to 790 passengers being conveyed per train! The traffic in freight and livestock became of increasing importance as farmers of the American Midwest and Canada West came to realize the value of the new road. Bumper crops and tremendous British demand occasioned by the Crimean War were also significant factors in the rapidly increasing freight traffic. In response to this traffic growth, the Great Western constructed the Komoka-to-Sarnia branch line, opening it for business on December 27, 1858. In retrospect, double-tracking of the main line would probably have been the wiser response. Table 2-1 illustrates the phenomenal early growth of traffic on the railway. With dividends of 8 percent (1855) and 8.5 percent (1856), branch-line construction proceeding, and rapidly increasing passenger and freight growth, the future looked quite bright despite a shaky first year.
In Toronto, city council finally relented, allowing the Great Western access to the station built by the Northern Railway of Canada in May 1853. The Great Western used the station from December 1855 until 1858. This station was a simple wooden structure that was located on the site of the current Toronto Union Station.
There were three locations on the Great Western that required pusher (helper) locomotives for all through- freight and express passenger trains and a large proportion of local trains:
An incline starting half a mile east of St. Catharines and extending to within three miles of the Suspension Bridge (rise to the east = 261 feet in 7.5 miles or 0.66 percent). The series of gradients ranged from one foot in 156 feet (0.64 percent) to one foot in 135 feet (0.74 percent), with a level break at Thorold station. Pusher service was generally needed between St. Catharines and Suspension Bridge (11.25 miles).
An incline starting at Hamilton station and extending to Copetown (10 miles) (rise to the west = 494 feet). The series of gradients ranged from one foot in 116 feet (0.82 percent) to one foot in ninety-four feet (1.06 percent). This incline was followed by a second one to the west of Harrisburg station (rise of 116 feet in 5,065 yards, or nearly three miles. average of one foot in 131 feet [0.76 percent]). Pusher services were needed over this second grade as far as Paris station, which was twenty-nine miles from Hamilton, especially with express passenger trains.
There was a rise of 106 feet in two and a half miles (mean of one foot in 123 feet or 0.81 percent) to the west of London. At the summit, the grade was one foot in ninety-six feet (1.04 percent). Pusher services were needed up to the summit of the grade (4.25 miles). With westbound express passenger trains, pusher services were needed to Komoka (eleven miles). This grade passed through two of the deepest clay cuttings on the line, which were full of springs and quicksand, leading to high maintenance costs.
There were additional secondary class grades on the main line that did not require pusher services:
Primarily between Paris and Princeton, with a rise to the west of sixty-five feet in 3,012 yards (average of one foot in 139 feet or 0.72 percent)
East of Hamilton, rising one foot in 151 feet (0.66 percent) for three quarters of a mile.
The aggregate length of inclines on the main line requiring pusher services was twenty-three miles. However, pusher locomotives actually worked over forty to fifty miles in three separate sections. These would include eleven and a quarter miles for eastbound
Joint Great Western/Buffalo and Lake Huron (GTR) station in Paris. The presence of three rails on the Great Western line date this photograph to the period of 1866 to 1871.
Paris Museum and Historical Society, Paris, Ontario.
trains, thirty-three and a quarter miles (or forty miles for express passenger trains) for westbound trains. Pushers would return light so mileage would actually double, thus becoming an average of forty-five miles each way or nearly 20 percent of engine mileage of all main-line through trains! Table 2-2 provides elevation profile data for the Great Western main line and its affiliated railways.
The building of the railway had cost a great deal more than was expected. The first two hundred thirty-nine miles (Suspension Bridge to Windsor) had cost £2,705,264 ($13.175 million U.S.) up to April 30, 1854, and, by 1857, the cost of three hundred fifty miles, including the fifty miles of the Sarnia branch under construction and the seventeen miles of the Galt and Guelph branch, had cost an astounding £5,267,944 ($25.655 million U.S.).
The considerable costs of construction and maintenance of the Great Western can be explained by a number of factors. All rails, fasteners, and other materials had to be imported from Great Britain, being sent over in sailing ships to Montreal, where they were transferred to schooners and other small vessels capable of reaching ports on Lakes Ontario, Erie, and St. Clair and the Thames River. From these ports, they were hauled by oxen or horses over execrably bad roads to their final destination.
Grading and laying of tracks comprised the most laborious work, being performed with primitive equipment such as picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows. Most labourers and supervisory personnel originated from the British Isles.
Ties were of white oak, measured six inches by nine inches by nine inches, and were spaced thirty inches centre-to-centre. In the era before creosote and other wood preservatives, ties had a lifespan of approximately eight years. Buildings, bridges, and viaducts were virtually entirely of wooden construction when first built and constantly required renewal and were subject to damage by fire. In many cases, these fires originated from sparks emitted by locomotives fired with wood. Wooden bridges were gradually replaced by iron truss spans with stone abutments or were filled in as embankments, both methods being expensive improvements. In some cases, embankments were widened from fifteen feet to eighteen feet at the top due to the collapse of some of the earlier narrow embankments.
Iron rails used on the main line were of three types:
Flange or T rail with fish joints (weighing sixty-five pounds/yard)
U or bridge rail, fastened at the joints with wrought iron plates on which the ends of the rails rested, which were spiked down to the ties and bolted together with bolts and nuts (weighing sixty-six pounds/yard)
Light and heavy compound rail (weighing sixty-six and eighty pounds/yard, respectively). The two halves of these compound rails were riveted together and spiked directly to the ties.
On the main line, at the time of the railway opening for business, there were thirty-four miles of fished T rail, 156 miles of U rail, twenty-three and a half miles of light compound rail, and fifteen miles of heavy compound rail. The sidings (approximately eighteen miles) were laid with common T rail with cast-iron chairs at the joints (weighing sixty-two and a half pounds/yard). Like other railways of the era, the Great Western suffered severely from poor-quality rails. By the end of July 1860 the track composition had changed substantially so as to consist of 116 and 115 miles of fished T rails (weighing sixty-five pounds/yard) and U rails (sixty-six pounds/yard), respectively.