LOST STATION
There are few signs of it left, and only a handful of clues, but Ashburnham once boasted a busy railway depot.
The Ashburnham train station and the several buildings essential to a railyard operated off and on from 1854 to the 1890s. When the buildings were not needed for rail purposes they were used for storage.
The Ashburnham railyard was set aside in 1853, and included a wide swath of land between Mark Street and Rogers Street (then known as Stewart Street) from Hunter Street (then known as Elizabeth Street) to south of Robinson Street. This quickly became the centre of the village. The town hall and school were near Mark and Robinson, and the drill hall was built along Mark Street near Hunter, and the new Ashburnham village hall was built on the corner of Mark and Hunter by 1892. Rogers Street had St. Joseph’s Hospital and St. Luke’s Church. Because of the railyard, Robinson Street rarely looked like a street.
In 1854, the Review urged the need for a new hotel to handle the tourists that will come with the new railway linking the town to Cobourg and the wider world. The newspapers cheered the extraordinary development of railways in all directions but paid little attention to the rail station or depot.
By October 1858, Robert Dennistoun in announcing the auction sale of Perry’s Mills at Nassau Mills noted, “The rack of the Peterborough and Chemong Lake Railway, being a continuation of the Cobourg and Peterborough Railway, is surveyed to the mills, and is now graded to within a mile of them, thus affording the prospect of being able by next spring to load lumber at the mill on the cars for direct transportation to Cobourg.”
When the Prince of Wales visited Peterborough in September 1860, he arrived at the Ashburnham depot. The procession was organized on the railyard property. Three horses with marshals led the way followed by five carriages (all with horses) and then the carriage with the Prince. These were followed by another half dozen carriages, and the band. The Prince’s carriage was at the passenger train station, nearly halfway to Robinson Street.
Thomas White, Jr., then an editor with the Peterborough Review, commented in 1861, “During the summer months, when the greater portion of the sawn lumber is shipped, there are two railroads in constant operation, one to Port Hope, the other to Cobourg.” Both lines, he noted had the same gauge as the Grand Trunk Railway running from Montreal to Toronto via Cobourg and Port Hope.
The railway proved very important to the development of Peterborough. The train station was in Ashburnham because it postponed the need for a railway bridge over the Otonabee. However, Poole, who wrote the 1866 history of Peterborough, was struck by how little Peterborough paid for railways and how much it benefitted. There is no discussion of the station. In May 1873, the Review noted that the Cobourg track was laid throughout the village, and the railway bridge, later known as the Black Bridge, was nearly complete.
The Romaine map of 1875 shows buildings and is one of the best maps ever, but it shows no buildings on the Ashburnham rail yard. However, it is clear that several railway buildings were on the property, and Ludgate had a large building on Hunter Street, lot 6 south side, and there was a building on lot 8 south side. The railway lands were narrow at Hunter Street, the width of one lot, number 7 south side. As well, there was a grain elevator on the Robinson street side of the yard.
There was a new burst of energy for the Ashburnham station after the Grand Junction Railway from Belleville reached Ashburnham in 1880. After the Midland Railway, aided by the Grand Trunk Railway, amalgamated several lines in 1883, new railway construction occurred to the north from Ashburnham. These changes are reflected clearly in the 1887 map that appeared in the Peterborough Review. There were three local stations, including the Ashburnham station, shown on the west side of the tracks and south of Hunter.
The 1882 fire insurance plan does show buildings on the site. The “depot” is shown on the west side of the racks, fairly close to the B.C. CH (Bible Christian Church, which had become Wesleyan Methodist with the 1875 church union) which was then midway between Hunter and Robinson on the east side of Mark Street. The new Mark Street United Church replaced it in 1928, and the former church was replaced by a double bungalow. The 1882 map also shows Hatton’s Grain Elevator, 3½ storeys and with a capacity of 35,000 bushels, in the Robinson Street right of way. The railway engine house is shown clearly on the east side the tracks, south east of the elevator.
The fire insurance plan for 19151922 shows several buildings, mostly frame, around the railyard. To the east of the tracks at Hunter Street, the Canadian Oil Company had several low-rise buildings, and at the Robinson Street side east of the tracks were coal sheds for McCarthy & Johnson. In between there were a few sheds, one of which was a one-storey building with weigh scales. On the west side of the tracks, and firmly in the Robinson Street right of way, were several buildings tied to W. Scott Co. Ltd, which included an ice house and a cold storage facility, and office, and coal sheds.
Also on the west side of the tracks was a frame building that was on the footprint of the Depot identified on the 1882 map, 1½ storeys high. This building is labelled “RAGS, ASHES, ETC.” and a note that it had electricity that was not used. The building appears to be about 20’ x 70’.
As for appearance, it seems likely that the Ashburnham station was built with similar specifications to the station at Harwood. That building was removed in the early 20th century to serve as a community centre in Roseneath. It has been returned to Harwood with the hopes of being rebuilt as a station museum. That building as described by Ted Rafuse, the fine Cobourg historian, was 24’ x 60’, 1½ storeys, board and batten construction, without a basement but on a foundation of field stone. A photograph taken by Notman’s in 1895 shows the track side of the building had three doors and four windows. The gable end had two windows.
Curiously, the Charles Cooper’s Railway Pages on the web show a photograph that a Wayne Lamb described as the second Ashburnham station. It appears to be slightly longer, and has eight dormers and two chimneys projecting from the roof. The photo lacks any information about the provenance of the picture and there is insufficient context within the photograph to confirm or deny that this was really the Ashburnham station.
Still, there is some advantage to looking at this photo. It has similar shape to the Harwood station, but appears to be longer and to have dormers that could have been added for modernizing. A building was still standing on this site in 1922.
However, the Ashburnham railway station was an important part of the local rail infrastructure when railways were crucial to the area’s development. The Peterborough Historical Society’s trailway plaque about the station is north of the actual site but it is worth pausing while walking the Rotary Greenway Trailway.
NOTE: Special thanks to Ken Brown and to Gordon Young, as well as others with whom I discussed the historical puzzles tied to the Ashburnham train station.
When the Prince of Wales visited in 1860, he arrived at the Ashburnam depot.”