Alex (Page 39)

But the town’s position as a tourist destination is relatively recent in the region’s history. While the history of Niagara-On-The-Lake reaches back to the original European settlement of Upper Canada, its connection to the railway also dates back to the early days of the railroad in Ontario. And that is no more shown by a strange-looking coffee shop a little bit off the main street. The presence of the Welland Canal had helped intertwine the communities of the Niagara Region. The growth of agriculture and industry combined with marine traffic had created a network of urban communities. A means to move people quickly between theirRead More →

Sitting as the main building at the Fort Erie Railway Station, the former station that once served the village of Ridgeway is a prime example of Grand Trunk’s plan to modernise the railway at the start of the 20th Century. It is also interesting that a village as small as Ridgeway would warrant such a large station. The railway first came to Ridgeway thanks to Brantford, Hamilton and the Great Western Railway. As a result, the Buffalo, Brantford & Goderich Railway, which eventually became the Buffalo & Lake Huron Railway despite its financial instability through the first half of the 1850s, finally reached Paris, OntarioRead More →

Sitting well outside of the two historical downtowns within the community of Fort Erie sits several lonely buildings and overgrown tracks. These small remains are left of what was once a massive railway yard that had existed since the earliest days of the railway in Fort Erie but is today a mere shadow. The Buffalo & Lake Huron Railway saw inception as a means to provide railway access to the people of Buffalo, Brantford and Goderich; the railways two main terminuses were Fort Erie and Goderich, where cars would be loaded onto massive rail ferries to be floating to destinations across bodies of water, atRead More →