Scoudouc River piers were part of first railway in New Brunswick
Vast network of rail lines cost a fortune and shaped the province, but now lie abandoned
Down a little path through the woods, off a recreational trail in Shediac, stone piers stretch across the Scoudouc River, an unofficial monument to New Brunswick's railway heyday.
"This is actually quite a big deal and it just sort of sits here — like a lot of things," said James Upham, a roadside history columnist with CBC's Information Morning Moncton.
The Shediac-to-Moncton railroad tracks were the first to go into service in New Brunswick, said Upham.
The inaugural run took place on Aug. 20, 1857.
A project that began earlier, to link Saint Andrews and Quebec, had stalled because of a border dispute.
The company behind the Shediac-Moncton project was called the European and North American Railway.
It went on to build many other lines in the province in the decades that followed, including the route between Moncton and Saint John that continues to operate to this day for freight.
Passenger service on that line and beyond, through southwestern New Brunswick and Maine to Montreal, ended in 1994, after which a lot of the track was removed.
"This is so hard to explain in a world where we can just hop in a car and drive 120 km/h to get a burger," said Upham.
"But there was a time when the process of trying to get from Moncton to Saint John was a day-long, exhausting, miserable event."
A stagecoach line was in operation, but accommodations were crowded, not terribly comfortable and at the mercy of the weather, he said.
The road could be washed out and travellers would find themselves stuck on one side of a river and forced to stay at whatever lodging could be found.
When rail lines began operating, they revolutionized life in the area, said Upham.
"Trying to go see somebody in this other town goes from being a miserable, laborious, potentially days-long process to a thing you can pull off in an afternoon for a cup of tea and then go home."
Likewise, it became possible for passengers to take a day trip to the beach, he said.
The rail line fuelled a lot of growth in Moncton, said Upham, and changed many other communities along the route to Saint John.
"This is where Sussex comes from," he said. "This is where so many of these little communities change so fundamentally because of this exact line, which is now kind of sitting here, mouldering in the woods."
Similar growth was fuelled by rail construction all over the province and the country, said Upham.
It was fostered by the British and provincial governments.
"This was … the Empire … investing in the physical infrastructure of this place to get communities connected and to get things moving around," he said.
The level of investment that took place in railway development in the late 1800s is unlike anything that has been seen in quite some time, said Upham.
"If you were a businessperson or an entrepreneur … the government here was going to pay you $10,000 per finished mile."
"In the 1850s to '60s, that is a gargantuan amount of money," he said.
Railways were cutting-edge technology at the time, akin to quantum computing or artificial intelligence in modern terms, said Upham.
When even the concept of a metal cook stove seemed innovative to the average person, railways were next level.
"The idea that they were going to build these huge bridges … they were going to cut through hills … and drive iron steam-powered trains from city to city, this would have sounded crazy to some people."
It was one of many things that became possible with advances in steam engines, said Upham.
People could cross the Atlantic Ocean in a period of days instead of weeks or months and plan their travel at specific dates and times.
"This is a massive shift in how the world looks at itself, how the world functions and how human beings get around places," he said.
The Shediac-to-Moncton rail line was in use until about 30 years ago.
Michael Rodgers worked on it as a brakeman and locomotive engineer from about 1975 until it shut down in 1990.
The biggest customers were in the Scoudouc industrial park, he recalled, including a bottling plant, window factory and scrapyard.
Rodgers also happened to be on the final passenger train to make the run back in 1959.
He was just six years old and lived down the street from the train station in Shediac.
His dad put him and his siblings on board for the short return trip to Pointe-du-Chene, where the train turned around.
"We'd see the train go by all the time. So to get on and go for a ride was a big deal," he said.
Rodgers was part of a group that rallied to save the Shediac train station from demolition.
The building dates back to 1903, he said, and has been turned into a museum, where he works one day a week during tourist season.
As the highway was built and people switched over to cars, the Shediac-to-Moncton line fell out of use, said Upham.
But rails still exist from Painsec Junction to about Scoudouc.
He'd love to see more of that route and others across the province repurposed.
"The network of potential trails sitting in the woods of New Brunswick right now is astonishing."
In the southeast alone, there are old lines between Elgin and Havelock, Harvey Bank and Alma, he noted.
Only portions are used for walking, biking and riding ATVs.
Maps from 100 years ago show rail lines crisscrossing the province, he said.
Highways don't connect communities to the same extent rail lines did, said Upham.
"This network was huge, expensive, took a ton of effort, and it's just sitting here."
According to a document on the New Brunswick government website, the province acquired the former railway lines in the province belonging to CNR and CPR in 1993, for the purpose of converting most of it to recreational trail.
About 1,100 kilometres of trails exist, the majority of which are used by motorized recreational vehicles, said Nick Brown, a communications officer with the Department of Natural Resources and Energy Development, in an emailed response.
Other sections have the potential to be developed for recreation as well, he said, but no new projects are in the works.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With files from Information Morning Moncton