Huron Central Railway

v t e Huron Central Railway Webbwood Subdivision
Legend
CN Soo Sub 179.3 Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario Shell Sault Ste. Marie Terminal spur Garden River 170.7 Garden Echo Bay 164.3 Ekoba Highway 17 161.0 Bar River 158.1 Isbester 151.2 Desbarats 149.4 Potlock 143.0 Bruce 135.0 Nestorville 133.2 Sherwood Highway 17 130.8 Thessalon 126.7 Livingston 121.9 Dayton 112.8 Dean Lake Mississagi River Blind River 102.4 Blind River 95.1 Algoma 87.4 Spragge 83.4 Serpent Serpent River Serpent River quarry spur 78.3 Kenabutch 77.4 Cutler 71.6 Spanish 66.3 Walford Highway 17 Swift Railroad Contractors spur 58.4 Massey Highway 17 former CPR Little Current Sub 48.3 Webbwood Espanola Spanish River 41.9 McKerrow wye to Little Current Spur Spanish River Highway 17 Eacom Lumber Mill spur 32.6 Nairn 28.3 Turbine 25.1 Worthington 21.9 Victoria Mine Highway 17 18.3 Whitefish Vermilion River 11.1 Naughton Highway 17 Overpass R.R. 55 (Old Highway 17) Overpass 4.8 MP 4.8 4.5 Copper Cliff Vale Industrial Railway 2.1 Creosote 0.0 Sudbury CPR Cartier Sub

The Huron Central Railway (reporting mark HCRY) is a railway operating in northern Ontario, Canada. It is operated by Genesee & Wyoming Canada, the Canadian subsidiary of Genesee & Wyoming.

The Huron Central Railway was established in July 1997 to operate a 173-mile (278 km) route leased from the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) between Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.^[1] The lease agreements encompass all but 4.8-mile (8 km) of track at the Sudbury end of the 181.2-mile (292 km) line, known within the CPR as the Webbwood Subdivision, as well as the 3-mile (5 km) Domtar Spur, which branches southwest from the Webbwood Sub at McKerrow. The CPR retains running rights over about 22-mile (35 km) of track at the east end of the Webbwood Subdivision, and the HCRY has running rights all the way into Sudbury.^[2]

Coil steel manufactured by

Origins and route

One of the terms of

Exploratory surveys had been conducted as early as 1871 along two prospective mainline routes connecting the Lakehead with the east: a direct inland route through the rugged terrain of the Canadian Shield (proposed by Sandford Fleming), and a "water route" which would use steamships to connect the Lakehead with a port on the north shore of Lake Huron, and then continue on via rail.^[8][9] The latter would pass through the newly formed Algoma District, paralleling the historic voyageur route through the North Channel of Lake Huron and connecting a number of pre-existing points or transportation corridors with the east:

• Sault Ste. Marie, which originated as a historic indigenous settlement populated predominantly by Ojibwe people
• Bruce Mines, which was settled in a copper rush in 1846
• Thessalon, which was historically inhabited by First Nations people, appeared on French maps as early as 1670, and was settled by Europeans as a lumber mill town in the 1870s^[10]
• Blind River, which originated in 1789 as a North West Company fur trading post at the mouth of the Mississagi River
• Spragge, the place of a meeting between Samuel de Champlain and local Ojibwe people, which developed into a mill town named Cook's Mills by 1882^[11]
• The
  Fort La Cloche trading post near its mouth)^[12]
• Slightly to the north of the
  Salter's Meridian^[14]

Additionally, by passing largely to the north of the La Cloche Mountains, which divide the interior from the Lake Huron shoreline, the railway's route would pass through fertile lands with agricultural potential that were noted as early as the 1847 and 1848 surveys by the Scottish geologist and explorer Alexander Murray.^[14][15]

Construction of the line

Ultimately, Canadian Pacific would construct lines along both the northern inland and the southern lakeshore routes. At first, however, the company decided in favour of the southern route for its mainline, where the water route through

The CPR was not the only company pursuing a link between Southern and Eastern Ontario and Sault Ste. Marie. Another interested party was the

Also in 1881, the

Significantly, in 1883 and 1884 there had been a sea change at the CPR: an increasingly bitter James Hill resigned from the company, and became a major opponent of the company and its future president, William Cornelius Van Horne.^[9] On 1 May 1884, Worthington also resigned from the company after a disagreement with Van Horne^[20] and was replaced with Abbott as supervising engineer on the remaining eastern section of the mainline.^[9] In preparation for the opening of the new terminus at Algoma Mills, three steamships, the Alberta, Algoma, and Athabaska, had been built in 1883 by Charles Connell and Company of Glasgow. These ships began service in May 1884 from Owen Sound to Port Arthur, pending the opening of the line. By the end of 1884, however, this new mainline section had been suddenly downgraded to a branch line thereafter known as the Algoma Branch.^[21] Surveying and construction began on a new mainline route starting from the junction at Sudbury along a new route around this time.

During blasting and excavation along the new mainline a short distance to the north of Sudbury, high concentrations of

With the new mainline still under construction, the Algoma Branch went disused until 1888, when it was brought up to standard and finally extended to

• Copper Cliff
  , which was officially founded in 1901 as a company town
• Naughton, which was founded in 1887 with the relocation of the Whitefish Lake Hudson's Bay Company post northward to be closer to the line^[13]
• Whitefish
• Victoria Mines, which developed around a mine site located north of the line along a specially-constructed spur^[25]
• Worthington, which developed around the Worthington Mine, staked out when Charles Francis Crean discovered copper traces when examining track ballast along the line^[9]
• High Falls hydroelectric power dam^[26]
• High Falls, a company town formed in 1904–5 around the nearby Huronian Power Company
  dam
• Nairn, originally known as Nelson and grew informally in the 1890s as a CPR town until it became a lumber mill town^[27]
• McKerrow, originally known as Stanley Junction in 1908 and later Espanola Station, formed around a junction station
  with the spur line diverging from the Algoma Branch south to Espanola
• Espanola, formed as a lumber mill town next to the Spanish River as a company town of the Spanish River Pulp and Paper Company
• Webbwood, formed in the mid-1880s as the main CPR divisional town along the line^[28]
• Massey
  , where a town coalesced around the CPR station within an existing decentralized farming community
• Walford, a CPR town formed within an existing decentralized farming community^[29]
• Spanish, originally known as Spanish River Station, which formed around the CPR line as a commercial centre in a mining and logging area^[30]
• Serpent River First Nation's Cutler Station area formed^[11]

In its first few decades, the line saw traffic primarily from the mining and logging industries, as well as local farmers in the

The competing Algoma Eastern Railway was built in 1914 by the Sault Ste. Marie-based Lake Superior Corporation, which served a more primarily industrial corridor largely north of the CPR line in the east, though it did operate some passenger services.^[8] During the Great Depression, a number of dairy farms in the area were permanently shut down and mining and lumber operations reduced to skeletons or mothballed entirely.^[31] This drastically reduced traffic along both lines, and Canadian Pacific bought the Algoma Eastern line from the financially distressed Lake Superior Corporation. Over the next several decades, the Algoma Eastern line and rolling stock were gradually integrated into Canadian Pacific's operations and the Algoma Eastern name was retired. Much of the Algoma Eastern line was abandoned, and remaining portions were incorporated into the CPR Algoma Branch, which by that point had been reorganized as the Thessalon and Webbwood Subdivisions of the CPR, but was still known less formally as the "Soo Line".^[33] The decline along the eastern portion of the line was exacerbated by the Worthington mine disaster in 1927, when a mine shaft collapse destroyed a portion of the town of Worthington along with approximately 500 feet (150 m) of Canadian Pacific track, forcing the railway to permanently relocate its line around the crater left by the collapse as well as briefly rerouting its traffic along the Algoma Eastern line.^[34]

Highway development

Starting in the 1920s, efforts were made to build a modern highway connecting Sudbury with Sault Ste. Marie. This route had been surveyed along with the rail line in the late 19th century, and was displayed on some maps as the "Trunk Road", which a number of pioneer roads and industrial access roads connected onto.

With traffic declining, in 1997, Canadian Pacific leased the line to the Huron Central Railway, Inc., a subsidiary of Genesee & Wyoming.^[36]

The railway had been asking the provincial government since 2006 for funding to improve track conditions, and in April 2009, Genesee & Wyoming warned that, due to the ever-deteriorating track and the resulting increased operational costs, it would be forced to shut down the railway, unless the provincial government would provide money with which to undertake the necessary upgrades.

On September 24, 2010, $33 million in funding was announced for the rehabilitation of the railway, with the provincial and federal governments each contributing $15 million and Genesee & Wyoming making up the remaining $3 million.[41] Work began on August 10, 2011, with contracts going to Swift Contractors for tie replacement and track surfacing and M'Anishnabek Industries (a joint venture between B&M Metals of Sudbury and Serpent River First Nation) for ballast distribution.^[42] Work continues through summer 2012.

In May 2018, G&W announced that operations would cease by the end of 2018, citing a lack of provincial funding.^[43] Temporary funding was secured, but in October 2019, G&W announced the line would close in early 2020.^[44][45]

In early 2020, it was announced that G&W itself was being sold to

With no further government funds, G&W announced in September 2020 that the railway would be shut down on December 18, filing official notice to do so.[48] In October, layoff notices were issued to all 43 railway employees, to take effect after the end of operations.^[49] It was announced on December 11, 2020, that due to on going negotiations with the Canadian federal government and the province of Ontario, that the deadline to close the line would be extended to June 30, 2021. All present employees with lay off notices, have had their notices rescinded for the time being.

G&W rescinded its plans to end its operation of the Huron Central Railway in the end of May 2021, following agreements with the provincial and federal governments to support the company via Transport Canada's National Trade Corridors Fund.^[50]

Derailments

The most notable derailment on the line, the 1910 Spanish River derailment, occurred when the line was still operated by Canadian Pacific. A westbound Soo Express passenger train derailed while crossing the Spanish River bridge near Nairn, causing the deaths of 44 passengers and crew.

On June 12, 2006, 15 cars carrying generators derailed near

On January 1, 2017, 13 cars carrying steel coil derailed near Blind River. No injuries were reported, and no hazardous materials were involved during the derailment. The line was closed due to the incident until January 5.^[56]

Locomotive Roster

Several locomotives lettered for affiliate

See also