McAdam, New Brunswick
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
McAdam (2001 pop.: 1,513) is a Canadian village in southwestern New Brunswick.
McAdam was founded as City Camp in the 1850s as a small hamlet in the upper St. Croix River watershed supported by the lumber industry. Its name is derived from the numerous lumber camps in the area.
[edit] Village railway history
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For more details on this topic, see McAdam railway station.
The community's destiny was changed in the 1860s when its geographic location made it into a regional railway hub for southwestern New Brunswick.
The St. Andrews and Quebec Railway (SA&Q) had originally surveyed a line from the port of St. Andrews across the southern portion of the Saint John River watershed to a junction with the Grand Trunk Railway in Richmond, Quebec during the mid-1830s. Construction was started but did not proceed for several decades due to the unresolved border dispute with the United States; the resulting Webster-Ashburton Treaty of the 1840s did not allocate the entire Saint John River watershed to the United Kingdom as the railway planners had hoped.
Construction of the railway only restarted in the early 1860s under the name of the New Brunswick and Canada Railway (NB&C) and was built as a narrow gauge railway, passing through City Camp and Canterbury reaching Debec, just outside of Woodstock in 1867. The NB&C line was later absorbed into the New Brunswick Railway (NBR) system and extended further up the Saint John River valley to Edmundston.
In 1869, the European and North American Railway (E&NA) Western Extension opened its main line from Saint John to Vanceboro, Maine, passing through City Camp and forming a junction with the NB&C. This junction was called McAdam Junction and the NB&C line was converted to standard gauge in the 1880s. The E&NA Western Extension was absorbed into the NBR several years later.
In 1889, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) completed its International Railway of Maine across northern Maine for a direct eastern extension of its transcontinental mainline from Montreal to Saint John, purchasing the entire NBR and making McAdam a major CPR junction and division point.
A large roundhouse and classification yard were built and expanded, and a major passenger station built of granite was constructed to serve passengers changing trains to head to CPR's The Algonquin resort in St. Andrews. A 30-room hotel above the station served to house guests requiring overnight waits for train connections.
Rail traffic declined during the latter half of the 20th century, mostly as a result of changing rural economies and the rise of taxpayer funded highways. Severe ice jams in March 1987 were responsible for destroying two important CP Rail bridges over the Saint John River in Woodstock and Perth-Andover, resulting in the abandonment of CP Rail service north of Florenceville. In 1988, CP Rail placed all of its lines east of Montreal into a separate internal business unit called Canadian Atlantic Railway.
CP Rail was reportedly still losing money on its lines east of Montreal during the early 1990s and the company applied to abandon its remaining lines in southern New Brunswick. One of the four lines through McAdam was abandoned north to Woodstock at the same time as other branch lines to Fredericton and the remaining service in the Saint John River valley.
CP Rail applied to abandon the mainline through McAdam beginning in 1993 and again in 1994, however the remaining three lines through the village (to Saint John, Vanceboro, and St. Stephen) were eventually sold effective January 1995 to J.D. Irving Limited which now operates them successfully through its subsidiary the New Brunswick Southern Railway.
The McAdam passenger station saw its last passenger train on December 17, 1994 when VIA Rail's Atlantic was discontinued as a result of the uncertain future of the mainline.
Following the discontinuance of passenger service, the historic station fell into disrepair when the building passed through several winters without heat and lack of maintenance during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Local fundraising efforts in recent years have seen the building restored and renovated into a museum.
[edit] Geography
McAdams is near the southern rim of a large crater-like structure called the Mount Pleasant Caldera.
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