Great Western Detroit ticket office in 1859, located at the corner of Third and Woodbridge.
Burton Collection, Detroit Public Library.
The year 1860 saw a “bountiful harvest” and continued development of the first Canadian Oil Patch, discovered in 1858 in the area between the main line and the Sarnia branch around Petrolia. Conveyance of petroleum products in tank cars would become quite important to the company. Actually, a group led by John Henry Fairbank commissioned the building of the Petrolia–Wyoming spur line, which was taken over by the Great Western at a cost of approximately £10,000 ($48,700). Mr. Fairbank also donated the land upon which the Petrolia station was erected. This line was fully open for business in November 1867. London business interests apparently influenced the Great Western to charge more to ship refined oil than crude oil, thus encouraging shipment of crude oil to east London refineries at the expense of Petrolia refineries. Traffic receipts for the first six months were almost £9,000 ($44,000 U.S.) and for the first four years were nearly £30,000 ($146,000). Complaints about unfair freight rates continued until 1877 when the Canada Southern built a spur line into Petrolia, thus ending the Great Western monopoly. Mr. Fairbank was instrumental in this latter action as well.
Great Western Petrolia depot sometime between 1875 and 1898.
Glenbow Museum.
March 22, 1860, witnessed the opening of the new Desjardins Canal Swing Bridge. It had been tested the day before with the two heaviest locomotives on the roster: Titan (#75) and Pollux (#78) (total of one hundred tons).
Mr. Charles J. Brydges, managing director, resigned his position owing to his appointment as manager of the Grand Trunk Railway. (Obviously non-compete clauses were not used in managerial employment contracts in the mid-nineteenth century!) Mr. Thomas Swinyard of the London and North Western Railway of England was appointed general manager of the company on September 2, 1861.
Numbers of Great Western Railway personnel in 1860 included:
Head office = 38
Telegraphers = 43
Station agents = 90
Switchmen = 70
Others at stations = 218
Mechanics/others in shops = 602
On permanent way and works = 740
Enginemen = 51
Firemen = 51
Brakemen and baggagemen = 113
Conductors = 33
Total = 2,049
By 1860, the railway was finally beginning to emerge from the doldrums of the 1857 panic.
The departure of C.J. Brydges from the Great Western signalled the beginning of a general restructuring of railway personnel. The office of traffic superintendent was abolished. There was a very large turnover in personnel at all levels. As the editor of the Essex Record newspaper would note, on January 8, 1875, the directors had initiated an extensive movement to “sweep away the chaff.” In addition, the “doubling-up” process initiated by Brydges was expanded by Swinyard, the new general manager. Most employees could expect sizeable increases in workload, since the positions of many employees who had been terminated would not be refilled. For example, a Mr. Levissey, a track inspector based in Windsor, had nearly the entire adjacent section of line added to his responsibilities. Due to the great length of line for which he was then responsible, he was forced to move to Chatham.
A bridge inventory effective January 11, 1861, read as follows:
Wood (186 bridges): trestles (223 spans, 5,218 feet in length), pile (36 spans, 439 feet in length), bent & beam (359 spans, 9,213 feet in length), and arch & truss (61 spans, 6,014 feet in length)
Iron (1 bridge): tube (1 span, 180 feet in length) and brick or stone arch (2 spans, 184 feet in length)
Swing (wood or iron, 2 bridges): 2 spans, 232 feet in length
Total bridging: 189 bridges, 684 spans, 21,480 feet in length
(Data compiled from the Report of Samuel Keefer, Inspector of Railways, for the years 1859 and 1860 to the Board of Railway Commissioners of Canada. Reproduced in Railway & Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin, No. 51, 1941.)
Great Western wood-steel trestle bridge, St. Thomas, 1872. Staged photograph, looking northeast, of the newly completed bridge, with a construction train and gandy dancers on top.
Ian Cameron Collection, Elgin County Archives.
This inventory illustrates the ingredients for future financial woes, revealing a preponderance of wooden bridges that would soon have to be rebuilt due to the short lifespan of timber structures erected in the era before wood preservatives such as creosote. From a single firm (Phoenixville Bridge Works, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania), the Great Western would purchase 14,385 lineal feet (2.72 miles) of wrought-iron bridgework!
Toward the end of 1861, traffic again declined precipitously, this time due to the American Civil War. No dividend was paid in 1861. The chief engineer was still complaining bitterly about the quality of the iron rails. It was decided to erect a rail re-rolling mill in Hamilton to “rehabilitate” old rails more economically.
By 1862 traffic north-south via the Mississippi River had practically stopped. Canadian and “east-west” American roads now came into the welcome position of taking over this business. The very serious and ongoing loss of £7,000 ($34,000) by the Great Western alone during the first half of the year due to the depreciated value of the American dollar (below 30 cents to the Canadian dollar) led to a proposal. In it, the Grand Trunk, Great Western, and Buffalo and Lake Huron railways would combine to obtain prepayment of freight from Canada to the U.S. A bill to permit this arrangement was submitted to the Legislature of the Province of Canada but was rejected. Toward the end of 1862 Richard Eaton, locomotive superintendent, resigned and Samuel Sharp, car superintendent, replaced him. Although it was impossible at this time to raise freight rates, the recent large increase in traffic was gratifying.
On the afternoon of February 17, 1862, the Hamilton grain elevator, containing 30,000 bushels of grain, burned to the ground in a spectacular blaze. It was rebuilt on the same site and completed in the same year.
In 1863 the Grand Trunk terminated the agreement with the Great Western with regard to competition, much to the regret of the latter. New iron and stone bridges were erected over the Thames River at Woodstock, Ingersoll, and London, replacing wooden ones.
During 1864 the president of the company, Thomas Dakin, and director, Thomas Faulconer, visited Canada, inspecting the entire railway and its connecting lines (Michigan Central, New York Central, and Detroit and Milwaukee). It was made abundantly clear to them that, unless some drastic changes were made in the facilitation of transfer of passengers and freight between the Great Western and its U.S. affiliates, the Great