 | |
 Bay of Quinte Railway Engine #5 and its crew, about to leave Napanee for Deseronto, c. 1900–1903. | |
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Deseronto, Ontario |
| Reporting mark | BQ[1] |
| Dates of operation | 1897–1910 |
| Predecessor | Napanee, Tamworth and Quebec Railway (1879) Bay of Quinte Railway and Navigation Company (1881) |
| Successor | Canadian Northern Railway |
| Technical | |
| Track gauge | 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge |
The Bay of Quinte Railway (reporting mark BQ) was a short-line railway in eastern Ontario, Canada. It was formed as the Napanee, Tamworth and Quebec Railway (NT&QR), chartered in 1878 by Edward Rathbun and Alexander Campbell, with plans to run from Napanee through Renfrew County and on to the Ottawa Valley. Lacking funding from the governments, development never began.
Rathburn took over the charter in 1881. He started construction with the shorter Bay of Quinte Railway and Navigation Company (BQR&NC) that ran from his factories in Deseronto to the Grand Trunk Railway mainline at Napanee.[2][3] Construction on the NT&QR out of Napanee through Yarkers to Tamworth started the same year, but was abandoned by the contractor and Rathbun had to pay the workers out of pocket.
The line finally opened to Tamworth in 1884. In 1889 it was extended westward to Tweed while a branch eastward from Yarker to Harrowsmith connected to the Kingston and Pembroke Railway with running rights to Kingston. In 1890 the line was renamed the Kingston, Napanee & Western Railway, and the next year it was leased to the BQR&NC. The eastern branch was extended from Harrowsmith to Sydenham in 1893. In 1897, the two sections were legally merged into the newly formed Bay of Quinte Railway. In 1903 the final expansion was made northwestward from Tweed to connect to the Central Ontario Railway at Bannockburn, with a total of 134 kilometres (83 mi).
The line was purchased by the Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) in 1910, using its line from Napanee through Sydenham as the basis of a major expansion to Smiths Falls and onto Ottawa. CNoR's bankruptcy in 1918, followed by the Grand Trunk in 1923 led to the formation of the Canadian National Railways (CNR). Parts of the network were closed starting in 1935, and the last BQR fragment, from Napanee's historic 1856 Grand Trunk station to a Goodyear tire factory, was disconnected from the CN mainline at Napanee station in 2010.[4]
- ^ The Official Railway Equipment Register, Volume 28, Issue 4. Railway Equipment and Publication Company. 1912.
- ^ Brown, R. (2011). In Search of the Grand Trunk: Ghost Rail Lines in Ontario. Dundurn. pp. 104–108. ISBN 9781554888825 – via Google Books.
- ^ Brown, Ron (January 17, 2014). Dundurn Railroad Bundle: In Search of the Grand Trunk / Rails Across Ontario. Dundurn. p. 90. ISBN 9781459728363. Retrieved May 24, 2014 – via Google Books.
- ^ "CN's Millhaven Spur". Trackside Treasure. September 28, 2010.