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List of defunct Canadian railways

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The history of Canada’s railways began February 25, 1832 with the incorporation of the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad. It opened for traffic on July 21, 1836.

Thousands of railways were given a charter by the Federal or Provincial government, many never built anything, and many others were absorbed into other railways. Canadian National Railways consisted over some 400 railways. Many were “paper” railways, that is, they existed on paper with the actual trains bearing the name of another railway or system of railways. The reason for these “paper” railways was the ease of getting a charter, this was often done by a major railway such as Canadian Pacific or Grand Trunk but, the true interests were kept hidden to keep attention away from the efforts of competing major railways to gain access to another’s territory. In other instances local interests wanted a railway to connect their community with the main line of a major railway that did not enter their town, or to connect to another major railway for competitive reasons, to get lower freight rates, something that remains to this day. In many cases these local efforts were quickly taken over by a major railway to both expand its own network and to deny its competition access to traffic.

Streetcar and interurban railways were chartered provincially, in the case of Ontario under the Street Railway Act.

Non-common carrier railways did not require a charter under the Railway Act since they were used primarily for the owners own purposes, mainly logging and mining.

This list of defunct railways includes only those railways that actually came into existence. Many were taken over by other railways or had a name change and thus continued to operate trains over the same tracks. A few ceased to exist because they went out of business and were abandoned and dismantled.

For simplicity on this list, Canadian National Railways Canadian Pacific Railway and Grand Trunk Railway of Canada will be abbreviated for notations.

Also see the list of active Canadian railways.

A

B

C

NOTE: Canadian Northern Railway System was comprised of a number of constituent companies as follows:

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z


References

  • Dorman, Robert: A Statutory History of the Steam and Electric Railways of Canada 1836-1937 Department of Transport, Canada
  • Dorman, Robert: Appendix to above including addition of maps.
  • Dorman, Robert; D.E.Stoltz: A Statutory History of Railways in Canada 1836-1986


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