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Bridging the Gap: The Trestles and Tunnels of Eastern Canada

Think of railway bridges and one immediately conjures the vast chasms and looming mountains that railway structural engineers had to overcome in western Canada’s mountains and the Prairies’ wide valleys. But some of Canada’s longest and most unusual railway bridges span the chasms and canyons of Quebec and the Atlantic provinces.

Railway engineers first built their bridges almost exclusively of wood. It was plentiful, after all, and easy to assemble. But as trains became heavier — and since wood was flammable — the use of iron and steel began to seem like a better idea. In the mid to late 1800s, a number of bridge designers came up with increasingly stronger types of bridge construction.

Truss bridges (a structure whose strength lies in the criss-crossing of lengths of wood, and later iron and steel) can be attributed to William Howe’s railway bridges, built in the United States in the 1840s. Howe worked primarily with wooden structures. Squire Whipple of Utica, New York, created the first iron truss railway bridge in 1846. These gave way to increasingly stronger bridge styles from bridge engineers like James Pratt and Thomas Warren. Terms like deck truss refer to trusses that are situated below the tracks, while a through truss lies above the tracks. An arched or bowstring truss simply refers to a bow shaped top row of steel beams. Piers were initially constructed of stone upon which decks (pre-manufactured sections of track) were placed. Bents refer to the long steel structures that support the tracks used usually in higher trestle bridges. As construction progressed, the preference for steel over iron led to bridges so durable that many remain in use today.

A cantilever bridge’s main support extends from the ends of the structure, rather than resting on piers. They were rare in eastern Canada; however, the cantilever bridge crossing the St. Lawrence River at Quebec City is North America’s longest.

The Bridges of Quebec

Montreal

Because the city sits on a large island in one of the world’s largest rivers, Montreal is surrounded by bridges, among them the world’s greatest feats of engineering.

To the west there lie the two branches of the Ottawa River, which swirl around each side of Île Perrot. As the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) made its way westward in the 1850s, sturdy bridges to cross these two wide waterways were needed. The bridges at Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue and the one linking Île Perrot to Vaudreuil were completed in 1854. Designed by the firm Stephenson and Ross, the Peto Brassey Betts and Jordan Company finished the project. The bridges’ sixteen piers incorporated upstream cutwaters to reduce the impact by ice floes.

The Canada Atlantic Railway erected a major bridge over the St. Lawrence River east of Montreal, a portion of which crosses the ruins of a Lachine Canal lock.

The GTR initially built a tubular structure on these bridges — making them, in effect, an enclosed tunnel. That, however, proved unfeasible for a number of reasons: the bridges could not be widened to accommodate planned double tracking, the sides often caught strong gusts of wind, and the long enclosed tubes trapped smoke, making life unbearable for passengers. Finally, in 1898, the tube was replaced with an open steel deck on a row of stone piers.

Mere metres away from the GTR bridge stands the CPR bridge that was built for its main line in the 1880s. The CPR bridge uses a different style — four arched through trusses made of steel on top of a row of stone piers. These historic bridges are best viewed from the Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue Canal National Historic Site in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, over which both bridges cross.

In 1887 the CPR kept on building, adding its Short Line, from Montreal to Saint John, New Brunswick, to access the year-round port facilities. It crossed the St. Lawrence with its Lasalle Bridge. The first bridge built was a combined truss and box span. In 1908 that bridge was replaced in order to accommodate double tracking. Today’s bridge uses steel deck girders and deck trusses supported on stone piers. A lift bridge over the St. Lawrence Seaway on the south shore lifts the bridge to allow the massive ocean freighters to glide by below. A small fading wooden plaque on Boulevard Lasalle in Parc Saint-Ange near the Lasalle commuter station describes the heritage of the site.

A short distance west of Sainte-Anne, the Canada Atlantic Railway (CAR) constructed a massive bridge over the St. Lawrence River in 1897, linking Valleyfield with Les Coteaux. The CAR was an ambitious project, built by Ottawa lumber baron J.R. Booth, to link the Georgian Bay port of Depot Harbour in Ontario with the Atlantic seaboard. It was opened in 1897. From Valleyfield, a one-time busy railway town and now a Montreal suburb, nine through-truss spans cross the first section of water to Île Longueil, from there four more spans link to Île aux Chats, and finally four more to Île D’Adoncourt. These structures, however, are difficult to view from anywhere but the water, and passenger trains no longer cross them. The most interesting and photogenic view from land rests in a small park in Les Coteaux, where a single-span truss carries the tracks over a crumbling abandoned lock on the old Lachine Canal.

Carrying the CNR over the Rivière-des-Prairies just beyond the Pointe-aux-Trembles station northeast of Montreal are two impressive trestles of over 350 metres and 290 metres respectively, separated by Île Boudan, with a combined total of thirteen through-arch truss spans.

But perhaps the most famous of Montreal’s bridges is the Victoria Bridge. Throughout the 1850s railway building was frenzied. Tracks radiated from the south shore of the St. Lawrence, while Montreal, across the wide river, was fast becoming a transportation and commercial hub. Ferrying trains across the river or by winter rails on the ice was cumbersome and uneconomical. A permanent bridge from Montreal over the river was essential for trains to access the rails that linked with the Atlantic ports. And so, in 1853, the GTR hired one of the continent’s most revered bridge engineers, Robert Stephenson, to come up with the impossible: a bridge over the St. Lawrence, some 2.5 kilometres across. Three thousand workers picked up their tools and started construction.

The original design was for a tubular structure, enclosed on the sides and the top. But, as with the Sainte-Anne bridge, the design was fatally flawed. With the increasing use of coal as a fuel, the dense smoke became trapped in the tunnel. So, to no-one’s surprise, the tubes were replaced in 1897–98 with a series of through trusses resting on twenty-four stone piers. It became known as the Victoria Jubilee Bridge, the longest railway bridge in the world at the time.

Modern times brought modern changes. With the auto age, the bridge was widened in 1927 to accommodate motor vehicles. Then, in 1959, with the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the river rose to cover much of the iconic stone piers. In addition, a second bypass approach was added to the southern approach with a second lift bridge, so that trains might use one set of tracks while the other set rose into the air as ocean freighters passed below them.

The Quebec Bridge

This massive span of nearly six hundred metres is considered to be the world’s longest cantilever railway bridge. But that engineering feat was achieved at a deadly price. Construction began in 1898, but a fatal design went unnoticed, and in 1907, as the bridge was nearing completion, the mighty structure crashed down with a roar, killing or drowning seventy-five workers. The following year, the Quebec Bridge Company took over the project, and in 1910 began the construction anew. In 1916, as the centre span was being lifted into place, the bridge collapsed again, killing thirteen. The bridge finally opened in 1917 as part of the NTR’s western main line. The NTR’s Bridge station stood at the north shore where VIA Rail’s Sainte-Foy station now sits.

When the ICR (which later became part of the GTR) built its line between Charny and Chaudiere Junction on the west side of the Chaudiere River, it erected an impressive eight-span through-truss bridge high above the foaming rapids below.

The deadly cantilever bridge over the St. Lawrence River at Quebec City is the world’s longest cantilever bridge.

Quebec’s Northern Bridges

Many of the railways that reached into the mountains and clay plains of northern Quebec were colonization lines, built to lure settlers from the overcrowded farmlands along the St. Lawrence River Valley. The line used by the P’tit Train du Nord, constructed between 1891 and 1902, is now Quebec’s most popular cycling and skiing trail, but has few significant bridges. It does, however, offer what may be the last wooden trestle in the province — an eighty-metre bridge that trail users encounter upon entering the terminus of Mont-Laurier.

The Pontiac and Pacific Junction Railway (PPJ) line constructed through the Pontiac region of Quebec, west of Aylmer, presents one fairly modest, but nonetheless historic, iron two-span through-truss bridge. Located where the trail approaches the now-silent mill town of Davidson, a short distance from Fort Coulonge. The line was completed in 1888 and abandoned in 1983. The bridge, known as the “Black Bridge,” forms part of the PPJ cycling trail.

As the NTR made its way through the mountains of western and northern Quebec, the construction teams encountered many rivers and lakes that needed to be bridged. Between Hervey-Jonction and La Tuque, the tracks cross the highest trestle used by a passenger train in the province. The bridge runs over the Rivière du Milieu, and is visible only from the train. About fifty kilometres north of the divisional point of Fitzpatrick, the line crosses a system of causeways and trestles that combined extend roughly four kilometres along the Flamond River. From the divisional point and junction at Senneterre, the CNR, in 1937, extended branch lines southwesterly to Val-D’Or and Noranda to access the gold and mineral deposits being extracted there. To cross a series of rivers and lakes, the CNR erected three steel bridges between Val D’Or and Noranda, all of which lie immediately beside Highway 117. The longest crosses the Thomson River, and consists of three through trusses.

The CNR didn’t always enjoy success with its bridges. While constructing the three-hundred-metre bridge over the Okidodosik River, the structure had an unnerving habit of turning on its side due to the seemingly bottomless muskeg through which they were trying to build it.

The CN line to the Gaspé exhibits a string of impressive bridges, including a 230-metre structure at Grand Riviére, another of 180 metres over the river at Port-Daniel, and a 250-metre link across L’Anse-à-Beaufils River.

The Trestles

Like the bridges of western Canada, many in Quebec are high, awe-inspiring trestles above wide valleys. The famous trestle that crosses the Sainte-Ursule Falls near Shawinigan is but one. It consists of two trestles, really — one that crosses the falls themselves, which is the shorter of the two, and another, longer segment that rises high above what was once the original river bed before the course of the water was altered by an earthquake. The trestle can be seen from the footpath in Parc des Chutes de Sainte-Ursules or from the VIA train that rumbles overhead. The structure was erected by the CNoR in 1901 as part of the route between Montreal and the Lac-Saint-Jean area. The bridge stretches for three hundred metres and rises more than forty above the river below.

Such massive trestles were not just confined to the interior regions either. As the NTR edged westward from Quebec City in 1907, it followed the shore of the St. Lawrence before swinging inland to cross northern Quebec and Ontario. On what is today the outskirts of Quebec City, a massive trestle crosses the Cap Rouge River on a series of steel piers. Nearly one and a half kilometres in length, the bridge rises more than thirty metres above the river. This impressive structure is easily viewed from Rue Saint Félix or Parc de Lorraine situated at its base.

On the Mattawa to Témiscaming branch of the CPR, the trestle at Beauchesne was constructed in 1955, when the tracks were relocated to accommodate a new dam on the Ottawa River. It may not be as long as the others, but it soars more than thirty metres above the Beauchesne River. It can be seen from a logging road about thirteen kilometres southeast of the town of Témiscaming.

The CNoR Crosses the Ottawa River

In extending its line across western Quebec and into eastern Ontario, the CNoR found that it needed to cross the Ottawa River in three places. The first bridge, crossing at Hawkesbury, Ontario, no longer exists. Further west of Ottawa the line crossed the river from the Ontario side at Fitzroy Harbour into the Pontiac region of Quebec. This roughly five-hundred- metre long bridge is made up primarily of two through Pratt truss spans. The next crossing to the west was the five-hundred-metre bridge from Portage du Fort to the Ontario side. Completed in 1915, it consisted of ten deck spans and two truss spans. In 2013 the CNR announced its intention to abandon the bridges and the entire line. To view either bridge, it is necessary to walk the right of way, or venture along the river by boat.

The Bridges of New Brunswick

The Salmon River Trestle, Grand Falls

Located east of Grand Falls, this CNR trestle stretches so far into the distance it is impossible to see one end from the other. Rising more than sixty metres above the Little Salmon River, the trestle was built by the NTR in 1914 and extends more than four kilometres across the wide valley. The best vistas of this jaw-dropping structure are from the hamlet of Davis Mill, a short distance northeast of Highway 108. CN Rail’s freight trains continue to rumble across the mighty structure. At sixteen spans, it is the second longest trestle bridge in Canada. In fact, it is one of a series of four mighty trestle bridges built by the NTR within a fifty kilometre stretch east of Grand Falls.

The CN trestle over the Little Salmon River in Nova Scotia is eastern Canada’s longest trestle.

The Reversing Falls Bridge, Saint John

The 1870s and 1880s saw a spate of railway construction in New Brunswick. The ICR had arrived on the east side of the Saint John River, while the New Brunswick Railway (later the CPR) halted its line on the west side. The Reversing Falls (more like reversing rapids) prevented the two lines from connecting. Because the gorge containing the falls is narrow, a fairly short bridge would do. But due to the deep and rapid flow of the river in both directions, it would not be possible to place piers in the river. In 1881 the Saint John River and Bridge Company was set up to bridge the chasm.

The final design was put forward by the Dominion Bridge Company and called for an unusual structure that used cantilevers at the ends with a suspended span between them. The cantilevers measured about eighty-five metres and one hundred and thirty metres respectively, while the centre suspended span was forty-five metres. The overall length of the structure ended up being about four hundred metres, including approaches. It was opened for traffic in 1885. But with the increasing weight of the heavier locomotives and bigger trains, the bridge proved too light and was replaced in 1921 by a second double cantilever bridge. It remains in place today, while nearby the abutments and some piers of the original structure remain visible.

The Bill Thorpe Walking Bridge, Fredericton

Crossing the St. John River at Fredericton, the Bill Thorpe Walking Bridge is the world’s largest walking bridge.

It is said to be the world’s longest railway walking bridge. At 581 metres, that claim is unlikely to be challenged. This nine-span through-truss bridge was built by the Fredericton and St. Mary’s Railway and Bridge Company in 1886. It linked Fredericton, on the south bank of the Saint John River, to the emerging railway network on the north side, which ran from South Devon to Chatham on the ICR, as well as to Woodstock on the CPR. The first bridge was damaged in flooding in 1935, but was back in service two years later. By then it was under control of the CNR. That railway abandoned the line in 1996, and the bridge became part of a trail system from downtown Fredericton to Nashwaak. It functions not just as recreational trail, but also is popular with cycling commuters.

The Bridges of Nova Scotia

Grand Narrows Bridge

As the ICR built its rail line across Cape Breton Island, it encountered the Bras D’Or lakes, and chose the narrows in the lake system to cross. At the time it was built in 1890, the Grand Narrows Bridge was the longest in Nova Scotia. It was built by Robert Reid (of Newfoundland Railway fame) and measured more than five hundred metres. Its seven truss spans were manufactured by the Dominion Bridge Company in Montreal and floated to the site. A swing section allows boat traffic to pass. The bridge is easily viewed from the parallel Highway 223, while the beautiful Grand Narrows Hotel nearby, which once accommodated train travellers, now offers rooms as a bed and breakfast.

The Grand Narrows Bridge in Nova Scotia opens to allow boat traffic along the scenic Bras D’or lakes.

CNoR’s Nova Scotia Bridges

When the CNoR team of William Mackenzie and Donald Mann acquired the unfinished Halifax and Southwestern Railway in 1901 (the initials H&SW were often ridiculed to mean “Hellish Slow and Wobbly), they needed to bridge the LaHave River at Bridgewater. Here, they erected the longest bridge on the line, with six girder spans resting on stone piers. Part of the Bridgewater Centennial Trail, hikers can reach the bridge by stairs from the parking lot on King Sreet.

Another imposing CNoR bridge is the one that crosses the Mersey River in Liverpool, where the former station houses the Hank Snow Home Town Museum. Like that in Bridgewater, six steel girder spans rest on a string of piers.

The Bridges of Newfoundland

Newfoundland: The T’Rail Bridges

When the CNR abandoned its Newfoundland route, it left behind many bridges. While most were short spans across creeks and swamps, a few exceeded thirty metres. The longest of the lot is the bridge across the Exploits River in Bishops Falls, completed in 1901 after the third attempt at doing so. Although it does not rise high above the river, its 320-metre length, consisting of four bowstring trusses, makes it the longest in that province. The bridge has new decks to facilitate trail use. Many of the smaller bridges on the line are maintained by the T’Rail commission and are used primarily by ATVs and snowmobiles.

The Trinity Loop

The strange Trinity Loop is unique in North America. Built by the Reid Newfoundland Railway on the branch line to Bonavista in 1911, it was the solution to a steep descent toward the village of Trinity. The result was a 2,012-metre track curving through 310 degrees that circled around a pond and looped ten metres under itself. After the CNR gave up on the NL Railway in 1988, the Loop became an amusement park with vintage railway equipment following the track under the bridge. By the late 1990s that too was abandoned and tracks and equipment lay unused. In 2011 Hurricane Igor caused heavy damage to the tracks. Some of the equipment, however, still rests on site, although now heavily vandalized.

Several individuals have rallied to try to rescue the derelict attraction. Even though the site is listed on the Canadian Registry of Historic Places, the province has shown little interest in helping to resurrect the unusual feature. The municipality has incorporated policies into its official plan to “encourage the redevelopment of the Trinity Loop for a commercial tourism attraction.…” According to the Canadian Trackside Guide, the equipment consisted of a fourteen-ton diesel, a dining car, two boxcars, and a caboose.

Other Bridges

The bridge across the Tantramar Marsh leading into Sackville, New Brunswick, is a two-span arch-truss bridge on the original ICR line. What makes it interesting visually is its location immediately adjacent to an abandoned highway bridge.

The 460 metre Courcelles Bridge in Quebec’s Eastern Townships is one of the few bridges maintained by a municipality as a historic structure. It was built between 1891 and 1894 by the Quebec Central Railway, and served the rail line until 1991 when the rails were lifted. The line now forms part of a rail trail, although the bridge itself, with its open ties, is barricaded.

The ICR bridge that crosses the Wallace River between Tatamagouche and Pugwash was constructed with a swing section to allow boat traffic to access the sandstone quarries upstream for export to the construction industry in Boston and New York. The structure consists of three deck spans and a through-truss span in addition to the swing span. The bridge rests on four sandstone piers and lies about ten metres above the river. Today it is part of the Trans-Canada Trail between Pugwash and Pictou and is listed on the registry of Canada’s Historic Places. It is viewable only from the trail.

An impressive six-span deck-truss bridge reaches across the Salmon River in Chipman New Brunswick, built in 1907 by the Canadian Government Railway (later, the NTR) for its proposed cross Canada route from Moncton to the west coast. In the river nearby, the earlier stone pilings of the CPR are visible. The bridge remains in use by the CNR.

The CPR Short Line to Saint John, New Brunswick, crosses the Richelieu River at Saint Jean on a multi-span girder-plate bridge with a swing span in the middle to accommodate boat traffic. Near Mont Saint-Hilaire, the GTR also had a bridge across the Richelieu, and it was here that one of Canada’s worst train disasters occurred. In 1864 a newly hired locomotive engineer, unfamiliar with the line’s signalling system, misread a signal and plunged his passenger train into the river. Ninety-nine passengers, many of them new immigrants, perished that day. Today’s bridge consists of seven deck spans.

In Newcastle, New Brunswick, a pair of long bridges cross the Miramichi and Little Miramichi Rivers respectively, both of which extended about three hundred metres and comprise five through trusses sitting on stone piers. The CPR bridge over the St. Maurice River between Cap-de-la-Madeleine and Trois-Rivières stretches nearly three hundred metres, with five through trusses resting a string of piers.

And although it is neither the longest nor the highest bridge in eastern Canada, the single-span Pratt-truss bridge over the Nine Mile River (more like a creek) in the suburban sprawl that is Elmsdale, Nova Scotia, represents Canada’s oldest iron bridge. It was built in the 1870s when ICR railway builder Sandford Fleming began to insist that Canada’s railways give up the practise of building wooden trestles and adopt the more durable — and fireproof — iron bridge.