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Transportation History

Great Western Railway of Canada

Southern Ontario’s Pioneer Railway

by (author) David R.P. Guay

Publisher
Dundurn Press
Initial publish date
Dec 2015
Category
History, Post-Confederation (1867-), Pictorial
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781459732834
    Publish Date
    Dec 2015
    List Price
    $8.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781459732827
    Publish Date
    Dec 2015
    List Price
    $22.99

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Description

A look back on the brief and spectacular history of Canada’s Great Western Railway.

This book chronicles the genesis and all-too-brief existence of one of Canada’s greatest early railways, the Great Western Railway of Canada (1853–1882), a major precursor to the Canadian National Rail system.

Today, the Great Western Railway of Canada is a little-known historic line, overlooked even by many railway aficionados. But it was truly a railway ahead of its time. It was a pioneer in combining land- and water-based transportation, including the introduction of river car-ferries and passenger/freight steamships on the Great Lakes. It made waves of a different kind with its acquisition of the American-owned railway linking Detroit, Grand Haven, and Milwaukee. And its mammoth workshops were industrial monuments in Hamilton and London, Ontario, where inventive geniuses laboured to supply the booming rail trade of southern Ontario.

It was the ancestor of some of the most heavily used rail lines in all of Canada. This book has been written to do justice to a railway that truly must be considered one of Canada’s trailblazing lines. Amply illustrated with previously unpublished photographs and a thorough historical record of the Great Western Railway’s locomotives and rolling stock, it offers a ride back in time into the vanishing history of early Ontario railroading.

About the author

David R.P. Guay, is a life-long railroadiana collector and the author of Tracks to the Trenches and Steamships of the Soo Line. He began his second career as a writer in 2010, after a thirty-year career in geriatrics.

David R.P. Guay's profile page

Editorial Reviews

those interested in the subject will find this a useful work.

The Semaphore

An in-depth account of how the line came to be.

Canadian Rail