page_title: Prince Edward Island Railway
section_title: Canadian National Railways
hierarchical_section_title: Prince Edward Island Railway / History / Canadian National Railways
caption_attribution_description: English: Part of the Musquodoboit Harbour Railway Museum, Highway 7 (Marine Drive), Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia. Photographed 28 Sept. 2012 by Stephanie Clay.
context_page_description: The Prince Edward Island Railway was a historic Canadian railway in Prince Edward Island. The railway ran tip-to-tip on the island, from Tignish in the west to Elmira in the east, with major spurs serving Borden-Carleton's train ferry dock, the capital in Charlottetown, Montague and Georgetown and the original eastern terminus at Souris. A major spur from Charlottetown served Murray Harbour on the south coast.
  Construction began in 1871 but costs almost bankrupted the government by the next year, a problem that helped pave PEI's entrance into Confederation. The work was picked up by the Canadian Government Railways and largely completed by the mid-1880s. The PEIR saw heavy use, especially during World War II, but like many railways saw declining use through the 1970s. The line officially closed on 31 December 1989 and the rails removed between 1990 and 1992, with the provincial government receiving a one-time payment of $200 million to upgrade the road network in exchange for not opposing the closure.
  The provincial government purchased the properties in 1994, and 75 per cent of the route now forms the basis of the Confederation Trail rail trail system.
context_section_description: In September 1918, management of CGR (including PEIR) was transferred to the newly nationalized Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR). These companies were assumed by a new Crown corporation established by the federal government in December 1918, called Canadian National Railways (CNR). By 1923 all corporate entities ceased to exist under CNR.
  Soon after CNR took over, it was decided to standard gauge all narrow gauge trackage on Prince Edward Island.  This was completed from Tignish to Charlottetown by 1924, and remaining lines in the east end of the province were completed by 1926 except for the Murray Harbour line which was standard gauged by September 1930.
  The last significant railway construction on Prince Edward Island occurred during the early 1930s when the Hillsborough River Bridge carrying the Murray Harbour line over the Hillsborough River was unable to handle the heavier standard gauge cars, thus a 10-mile (16.1 km) connecting track called the Short Line was built from a point at Maple Hill Junction on the Mount Stewart Jct.-Georgetown line, to connect with the Murray Harbour track at Lake Verde Junction. In 1951, the Hillsborough River bridge was deemed too weak to carry even the lightest engines and cars, thus the trackage was removed and trains trying to reach Southport on the opposite side of Charlottetown Harbour would have to run over 30 miles (48.3 km) via Mount Stewart Junction and the Short Line.
  CNR was busy on Prince Edward Island during the Second World War when a 2-mile (3.2 km) spur line was built from St. Eleanors, west of Summerside, to service a new air force base (CFB Summerside), and the railway was pressed into service to supply a radar base in Tignish, as well as a flight training school in Mount Pleasant, midway between Summerside and Tignish.
  Increased use of diesel locomotives in North America during and after the Second World War saw CNR completely dieselize its operations on Prince Edward Island by the late 1940s as a means to save money on hauling bulk coal to the province. This meant that Prince Edward Island rail lines had diesel locomotives fully one decade before the rest of Canada saw the last of steam, giving the province a prominent place in Canadian railway history as one of the first regional dieselization projects.
caption: Diesel engine used in PEI in the 1950s. PEI had diesel service a full decade before the rest of Canada.
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