Lachine to Montreal in 9 minutes, in 1848
Effort to show off a new locomotive frightened passengers
The Lachine Canal, which opened in 1825, was built to bypass the Lachine Rapids. Twentytwo years later, the Montreal and Lachine Rail Road was built to bypass the Lachine Canal.
Passage through the canal was fine for freight but tedious for people. For that matter, the turnpike connecting Montreal with the village of Lachine was no great shakes, either — or rather, it could be altogether too shaky, given its potholes and other imperfections.
James Ferrier, a Scottish-born entrepreneur and future mayor of Montreal, was convinced a railroad about 13 kilometres long could compete with both, enabling people and indeed some freight to move smoothly between the city and Lachine, where steamboats connected that village with points farther west.
Besides, railroads were the coming thing in transportation, perhaps a bit like electric or even self-driving cars today. Energetic Montrealers like Ferrier and his partners had no wish to be left behind.
The enterprise was duly chartered, money was raised and rolling stock was ordered. The rail line itself was constructed in just a few months in the summer and fall of 1847, and opened on Nov. 22.
The official party, including luminaries like Governor General Lord Elgin, William Molson and Louis-Joseph Papineau, were taken to Lachine and back at a decorous 30 km/h, after which they tucked into a banquet at upscale Donegana’s Hotel on Notre-Dame St. Elgin said “the time is not too far distant when the railroad will be a link in the chain” binding the Atlantic and the Pacific.
The railroad shut down that first winter, but was back in business in earnest come springtime. There were six round trips a day, each taking 20 minutes to Lachine with a 10-minute layover until the return jaunt to Montreal.
There were some madcap moments. In 1848, two new locomotives were received from Scotland and the Montreal and Lachine’s patriotic Scottish superintendent, Alexander Millar, was determined to show the railroad’s directors and their guests how they could perform.
W.L. Kinmond, representing the locomotives’ manufacturer, was there that day. No sooner was everyone on board, he later wrote, than Millar opened up the throttle. The passengers were bounced and jostled every which way and soon became quite worried. One was “sent with his hat through the roof.” The train arrived at Lachine in 11 minutes instead of the usual 20.
“The feat was extraordinary but (the directors) were half dead with shaking and fear of an upset,” Kinmond continued. Unless Millar promised to slow down on the return leg, they would take carriages back to Montreal.
Millar duly made the promise — but had no intention of keeping it. “These directors will find out now that this is a Scotch engine, and that we can go at an even quicker rate,” Kinmond heard him say. And so they did, arriving in Montreal in just nine minutes.
“The president came to me very much ruffled and told me that he was going to fire Millar first thing in the morning,” Kinmond concluded. But like Millar’s promise, Ferrier’s was empty. Far from dismissing his fellow Scot, Ferrier congratulated him — albeit privately.
Alas, much of the rail line west of today’s Turcot Interchange passed over unstable ground. Twice, locomotives derailed and sank into the morass. They’re still down there.
Within three years of its opening, the railroad was operating at a steady loss. Ferrier and his partners thought they would bring in new business by extending the line to Kingston. But before construction could begin, the company was sold to a syndicate that formed the Grand Trunk Railway in 1852 — one of the ancestors of today’s Canadian National.
Trains eventually reached the Pacific, of course, though not as Lord Elgin had predicted. It was a train from the Grand Trunk’s great rival, the Canadian Pacific, that first did so, in 1886.