page_title: National Transcontinental Railway
section_title: The Grand Trunk partnership
hierarchical_section_title: National Transcontinental Railway / The Grand Trunk partnership
caption_attribution_description: English: Building a Bridge on the National Transcontinental Railway, ca 1910. (CSTM/CN Collection 84083-9) Français&#160;: Construction d'un pont sur le Chemin de fer national transcontinental, vers 1910. (Collection MSTC/CN 84083-9)
context_page_description: The National Transcontinental Railway was a historic railway between Winnipeg and Moncton in Canada. Much of the line is now operated by the Canadian National Railway.
context_section_description: The completion of construction of Canada's first transcontinental railway, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) on November 7, 1885, preceded a tremendous economic expansion and immigration boom in western Canada during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but the monopolistic policies of the CPR, coupled with its southerly routing (new scientific discoveries were pushing the northern boundary of cereal crops), led to increasing western discontent with the railway and federal transportation policies.
  The federal government had encouraged the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) system in the 1870s to consider building the transcontinental rail line. During the same time, a government survey party under the direction of Sandford Fleming set out across Canada to survey routes for the proposed railway. The "Canadian Pacific Survey", as it was called, surveyed routes to a number of Pacific Coast destinations (including Victoria on Vancouver Island). When Grand Trunk balked at building a railway using the survey, the government turned to the privately owned Canadian Pacific. The CPR, one of whose directors was James J. Hill, from Minnesota (and eventual builder of the transcontinental Great Northern Railway located just south of the US/Canada border), favoured a route farther south, as Hill hoped to tap into freight flows from the northern US states. That left Canada with a single transcontinental route close to the US border, since CPR chose to use Rogers and Kicking Horse passes rather than the surveyed route over the Yellowhead.
  By the early 1900s, the GTR was willing to consider building a second transcontinental system for the country if it received government assistance, similar to the CPR's deal. However, while the government and GTR were considering whether to proceed and negotiating terms, the Canadian Northern Railway was already building a second transcontinental rail line.
  The Canadian Northern Railway was an upstart regional system for the prairies that had begun in Manitoba under entrepreneurs William Mackenzie and Donald Mann in 1899 through their amalgamation of several smaller branch lines. The CNoR started the process of building Canada's second transcontinental system between 1903 and 1912. The system was built from Winnipeg westbound to Vancouver and eastbound to Toronto and Montreal. In addition to an extensive network of branch lines in the prairie provinces, CNoR had many branch lines in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime Provinces.
  But Mackenzie and Mann had spurned the federal government's offer for assistance to expand the CNoR in 1903 and in doing so, the federal government under Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier committed to building a transcontinental system in partnership with the GTR. In keeping with the trend of railways to exploit virgin territories, the government-backed "transcon" would run from the port of Prince Rupert, British Columbia, across the northern portion of the prairies to Winnipeg, and from there across northern Ontario and Quebec to Quebec City where it would cross the St. Lawrence River and continue on to its eastern terminus at Moncton, New Brunswick, by way of a route directly across central New Brunswick.
  The GTR board of directors wished to assume the financial risks only for the portion of the system west of Winnipeg and so the agreement resulted in two railway systems being funded by government: the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, which would run from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert and be built and operated by GTR as a subsidiary, and the government-owned and -built National Transcontinental Railway (NTR) would run from Winnipeg to Moncton and be operated by GTR upon completion.
  The GTPR/NTR deal came in the heady final days of Canada's railway boom and would soon prove to be the financial straw that broke the back of Canada's railway industry during the First World War. Canada has supported two transcontinental railway systems for many years, but even in 1914 it was not clear that there was enough traffic for three. The GTPR/NTR system was surveyed and construction began in 1905 and the ent
caption: Building a bridge on the National Transcontinental Railway, ca 1910.
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