Grand River Railway
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The Grand River Railway was an historic electric railway in southern Ontario.
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[edit] History
The Galt & Preston Street Railway was incorporated in 1890 an established an electric railway service on July 26, 1894 between Galt and Preston. The company was reincorporated in 1895 as the Galt, Preston & Hespeler Street Railway to extend service to nearby Hespeler. A bridge was built across the Grand River at Freeport in 1903. Later that year, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) acquired the company.
The separately owned CPR subsidiary Berlin, Waterloo, Wellesley & Lake Huron Railway was incorporated in 1908.
In 1914, the CPR incoporated the Grand River Railway Company to consolidate all of these CPR electric railway subsidiaries in Kitchener, Waterloo, Galt, Preston and Hespeler. GRR operations consisted originally of streetcars, however street trackage was gradually replaced by exclusive rights-of-way, which formed the majority of the railway's network by the 1920s.
Most of the GRR rolling stock was built by the Preston Car & Coach Company.
[edit] CP Electric Lines
In 1931, the Lake Erie & Northern Railway, another CPR subsidiary, was consolidated with the GRR to form the Canadian Pacific Electric Lines. CPEL ended operations on October 1, 1961 when freight service was dieselized and assumed by parent CPR.
The CPEL ended passenger services on April 23, 1955 and most passenger service was converted to bus.
[edit] Legacy
A remnant of the GRR/CPEL line remains an active rail corridor in the 21st century as CPR operates an industrial spur to reach a Toyota automobile factory in north Cambridge.
In 2000, the Grand River Railway's name was echoed in the creation of Grand River Transit to unify bus services in the Region of Waterloo.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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