Canada Atlantic Railway

Canada Atlantic Railway

Overview
Headquarters	Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Locale	Ontario, Quebec, Vermont
Dates of operation	1879–1914
Technical
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge

The Canada Atlantic Railway (CAR) was a North American railway located in Ontario, southwestern Quebec and northern Vermont. It connected Georgian Bay on Lake Huron with the northern end of Lake Champlain via Ottawa. It was formed in 1879^[1] through a merger of two separate railway companies that John Rudolphus Booth had purchased, and reached its full extent in 1899 through a third company that he had created. The CAR was owned by Booth for several years after its completion until he agreed to sell it to the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) in 1904.

For a short time at the end of the 19th century the CAR handled up to 40% of the grain traffic from Lake Huron; this was due to a combination of factors including the advent of the grain boom on the Canadian Prairies and prior to the construction of the Canadian Northern Railway's transcontinental line across Ontario, as well as prior to the opening of the Fourth Welland Canal.

The CAR continued as a separate GTR-owned subsidiary from 1905 until 1914 when its operations were fully merged into the GTR. The GTR encountered financial difficulty during and after the First World War and was dissolved and its assets merged into the Canadian National Railways (CN) in 1923. Today remnants of the CAR continue as either active rail lines for CN or Via Rail. Some abandoned CAR rail lines have been converted into rail trails.