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Former interurban railway in Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada

The Grand River Railway was an interurban electric railway (known as a radial in Ontario) in what is now the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, in Southwestern Ontario, Canada.

Starting in the 1850s, Canada West (today's province of Ontario) began to see its first railways. Of these, the first chartered was the Great Western Railway, which was completed in 1853 54 and connected Niagara Falls to Windsor via London and Hamilton, linking many contemporary centres of population, industry, and trade. in 1855, a branch line was built to Toronto, which fell on the east side of the Grand River, connecting towns and villages in the area such as Galt, Hespeler, Preston, and Guelph. Galt and Guelph in particular were developing into significant urban areas in the region. In the following year of 1856, the Grand Trunk Railway, the dominant railway in Canada East (today's province of Québec), made a major westward push by acquiring the fledgling Toronto and Guelph Railroad, whose line was then under construction, and extended this line to Sarnia through Berlin (today's Kitchener). Once complete, this made Guelph a major three way rail junction. In this climate of rapid rail development, ambitious town boosters sought to have their town or village also become a railway junction in the hopes that it would transform it into a city overnight. The merchants of Preston, who saw themselves as being in direct competition with those of Galt, quickly worked to establish a railway which would connect the Great Western and Grand Trunk through their own town and the town of Berlin across the river. In 1857, their dream would be realized with the completion of the Preston and Berlin Railway, which was routed through the small mill towns of Doon and German Mills, with a bridge crossing the Grand River north of Blair. This initial attempt to connect the two cities was short lived, however, as the bridge was damaged by ice flows in January 1858, and the railway was operational for less than three months. The surviving sections of the line were sold to the Grand Trunk Railway, which instead chose to extend the line south to Galt through the village of Blair in 1872, bypassing Preston entirely.

The Berlin and Waterloo Street Railway began operation in 1888 as a firmly 19th century style horse drawn street railway. However, things would quickly change; by the 1890s, the tone of railway fever had shifted, and many radial railways were being developed throughout Canada and the United States, as cities like Toronto and New York accelerated the process of amalgamation of nearby villages and towns, and urban businesses sought out customers travelling to the city from the suburbs. These systems were typically electrified rather than steam powered, and used tram style rolling stock to move a relatively small number of passengers at frequent headways within a region, rather than more traditional passenger trains pulled by dedicated locomotives, which were largely relegated to long haul trips. Growing towns and cities sought the ideal hybrid system of streetcars and railways: a light rail service which could easily shift from street rails to dedicated rail corridors and back again, allowing them to connect to important destinations in downtown areas while also being fast enough to connect cities to each other at the speed expected of contemporary passenger rail. These systems were often also known as interurbans due to the appeal of easily connecting neighbouring cities together with a regional rail line, often municipally owned and operated. The first such railway in the region was the Galt and Preston Street Railway (G&P), which began operations with half hourly service in 1894. With Preston boosters still concerned about the potential effect of the railway on their town's economy, the plan ensured that Preston would be the location of many operational aspects of the railway, including the power house, car barns, and machine shops. A year later, in 1895, it was extended to Hespeler and renamed the Galt, Preston and Hespeler Street Railway (GP&H), connecting the three largest settlements of what 80 years later would become the amalgamated city of Cambridge. In the same year, the Berlin and Waterloo Street Railway began to take steps to modernize its service by converting its horse cars to run on electric power. This proved unsuitable and a consortium of local businessmen, impatient at the lack of progress, purchased the railway and outfitted it with new, purpose built electric trams, which were manufactured in Peterborough.

The Canadian Pacific Railway had from the beginning taken an interest in the Galt and Preston Street Railway, then the Galt, Preston and Hespeler Street Railway, as an electric freight service would provide a convenient way to serve smaller freight customers profitably, due to the ability for electric locomotives to reverse without requiring a loop, as steam locomotives did. The G&P's charter, ostensibly mostly to provide Preston travellers with a connection to the Canadian Pacific via Galt, as well as to facilitate regional passenger transportation in general, provided Canadian Pacific an opportunity to "piggyback" and increase its freight operations. The Grand River area had long been dominated by the Grand Trunk Railway, and Canadian Pacific sought ways to compete with the Grand Trunk. With its close relationship with Canadian Pacific, the G&P provided free freight service to Canadian Pacific's depot in Galt, drawing business away from the Grand Trunk and provoking an all out freight war. In the truce agreed upon by both companies, Berlin remained Grand Trunk territory, while both railways would continue to serve Galt. Canadian Pacific, meanwhile, took control of the GP&H indirectly by buying up a controlling stake in the company through a proxy, its own General Superintendent J. W. Leonard, already laying the groundwork for the undermining of its agreement with the Grand Trunk. By the turn of the century, there was an explosion in plans for railway lines to serve Berlin, Preston, and Galt; the Hamilton Radial Electric Railway announced a plan to build a connection to Berlin, while the plan for a Preston to Berlin connection via Doon and Blair was revived. In 1903, the Preston and Berlin Street Railway, which had been chartered in 1894 and whose construction had begun in 1900, was leased by the GP&H, and began operations in 1904. A Berlin, Waterloo, Wellesley, and Lake Huron Railway was being promoted at the same time, which was planned to serve a staggering number of destinations from Berlin northward to Lake Huron. However, with many of its promoters and supporters being connected to Canadian Pacific and the GP&H, and without the funds for such an ambitious project, scholars like Peter F. Cain have argued that the BWW&LH was never planned to be constructed, and was simply a vehicle to further Canadian Pacific's ambitions to enter into Kitchener, despite its agreement with the Grand Trunk a decade earlier. In 1908, the GP&H and Preston and Berlin Street Railway were merged under the BWW&LH name, thereby giving Canadian Pacific a means to enter the Kitchener freight market, while ostensibly following the letter of its agreement with the Grand Trunk. In 1914, it was renamed to the Grand River Railway. As CP's consolidation of lines with freight potential had been ongoing, the City of Berlin made a successful bid to take over the Berlin and Waterloo Street Railway and operate it as a public service, which was complete in 1906. This line, which operated primarily along King Street, largely served commercial areas, and was most suitable for passengers, but served a role similar to local bus services today, rather than a regional railway role similar to the Galt, Preston, and Hespeler Street Railway. In 1921, this separation of services increased as the Grand River Railway re routed its trains to more fully follow the north–south freight line as a part of its switch from 600 V DC to 1500 V DC electrification in order to match the Lake Erie and Northern Railway, a move which prefigured their consolidation ten years later. Throughout the rest of the 1920s, the Grand River Railway continued to shift to using shared freight track, a move which was hastened by municipal politicians working to force trains off of King Street in favour of car traffic.

In 1931, the Grand River Railway was consolidated with the Lake Erie and Northern Railway (LE&N), another Canadian Pacific Railway subsidiary, to form the Canadian Pacific Electric Lines (CPEL). Under unified CPEL management, the two services were advertised in tandem, and LE&N rolling stock received repairs at the Grand River Railway's Preston barn. During the same year, the Grand River Railway advertised hourly service on every day except Sunday between Galt, Hespeler, Preston, and Kitchener, from 5:50 a. m. to 11:45 p. m., and nine trains a day (except on Sundays) to Waterloo, reflecting Waterloo's lesser importance and smaller population at the time. The Lake Erie and Northern, with its longer line and lower ridership, advertised primarily for summer excursion trips to Port Dover from the hot and crowded urban centres to the north, and during other parts of the year was largely sustained by its freight business.

Bus services became increasingly common throughout the 1920s and 1930s as more roadways were paved, fuel prices decreased, and bus manufacturing began to scale up. Canadian Pacific followed these trends with the founding of its Canadian Pacific Transport Company, which was used to supplement and/or replace some train journeys.

Throughout the 1930s, collisions between interurban cars and private automobiles became increasingly common in urban parts of Kitchener Waterloo, which was covered in detail by local newspapers like the Waterloo Chronicle alongside coverage of car on car collisions and pedestrians being struck and killed by automobiles. Around November 1937, the railway switched from whistles to horns at crossings, which were louder, leading to complaints from residents along the line and from the Waterloo town council. These incidents only continued after the end of the Great Depression and the Second World War, when automobile ownership and traffic volumes climbed steadily. More reliable personal cars, as well as improved highway and automobile service infrastructure, made it easier to drive to unfamiliar cities whose street geometry (and railway operations) could prove dangerous. In January 1930, the earliest reported collision at Cedar Grove Avenue in Kitchener occurred when Joseph Zinger, while driving his automobile, crashed into a Grand River Railway interurban car. on 1 August 1931, Charles Frank Houston died while pinned under his car following a collision with a Grand River Railway train at the Centreville crossing. A coroner's inquest later found that he had suffocated to death. The inquest absolved the train crew of blame, but "recommended the installation of visible warnings and signals at the crossing." In July 1932, Leander Cressman of New Dundee was driving along Mill Street in Kitchener when his motor car collided with a Grand River Railway train, critically injuring him. He died later in hospital. On 15 December 1937, Reginald E. Simpson, the local manager for the Sun Oil Company (later known as Sunoco), was driving his new automobile along Kent Avenue (the renamed Cedar Grove Avenue) when he was struck by a Grand River Railway car being driven by motorman H. C. Smith. Simpson was killed and his automobile was carried 198 feet (60 m). His wife, Mary E. Simpson, claimed $86,155.23 in damages against the railway. On 12 October 1946, Earl Hutchins, who was from Toronto, was driving through the Grand River Railway crossing in Centreville when his automobile was crushed by an interurban car. Similarly to the Simpson incident almost ten years earlier, Hutchins and his three passengers were killed. His wife subsequently claimed $50,000 in damages against the railway.

Amidst these events, regular passenger service to Waterloo was discontinued, after having previously been cut back to Allen Street from Erb Street. In early March 1938, it was reported that cars had only carried an average of five passengers per trip, with revenues to the company of $4.52 and expenses of $21.86 per day. The end of service was supported by the Waterloo town council, which deemed railway whistles and horns a nuisance. Interurban cars were replaced by bus service, necessitating a linear transfer for passengers at Queen Street. Ironically, passenger ridership in the overall system had yet to hit its peak, which would be nearly 1.7 million riders in 1940. Despite the overall success of the combined CPEL railway system, post Second World War social trends began to cause a drop in ridership as regional travellers became increasingly likely to own and drive cars. The beginning of residential subdivision development stimulated population growth outside of the historic downtowns of Berlin (by then renamed to Kitchener), Galt, and Preston, and they began to fall victim to urban decay. In the years following the 1919 Canada Highways Act, which provided stimulus funding for highway development, it became more practical and desirable to travel intercity by car, and development and urban planning began to adjust to car centric transportation with road widening, highway development, creation of low density residential housing subdivisions, and demolition of many urban buildings to provide parking, creating an induced demand feedback loop that favoured further car centric development, while many railway systems were discontinued or statically maintained, without significant expansion of track, upgrades to rolling stock, or sometimes even basic maintenance; the Kitchener and Waterloo Street Railway, which had been put under the management of the Kitchener Public Utilities Commission, was rendered disabled even before its planned shutdown due to damage to the overhead electrical wires which was not repaired. In 1946, the combined Canadian Pacific Electric Lines system had a continuous 75.61 mile (122 km) mainline, while carrying 1.5 million passengers and over half a million tons of freight. This represented a decline in passenger traffic of almost 200,000 riders per year compared to the peak in 1940. Meanwhile, Canadian Pacific Transport Company bus service was extended through Kitchener, and train and bus service began to alternate hourly. This followed a general trend, as train service was replaced with bus service on many railways, creating a downward spiral as ridership declined and train journeys with low ridership were cut or replaced with bus service. It was around this time that Canadian Pacific began to plan for total abandonment of passenger services along the line, even as freight carloads and profitability increased. In its first bid to discontinue service in 1950, Canadian Pacific's application was denied by Canada's Board of Transport Commissioners, but an allowance was made for Canadian Pacific to modify service as necessary to maintain profitability of passenger trips; as a direct result, Canadian Pacific discontinued nighttime passenger service altogether while simultaneously increasing fares, making railway journeys even less attractive to passengers. Passenger rail advocates at the time warned that these service cuts would eventually lead to complete abandonment, and protested to bodies such as the Kitchener City Council. Despite the cuts, passenger rail service continued until 23 April 1955, when it was replaced by bus service under the Canadian Pacific Transport Company. Bus service operations for Preston were sold to Canada Coach Lines Limited later that year, but Galt to Kitchener operations continued under the Canadian Pacific umbrella until 1 October 1961, when freight service was dieselized and assumed by the parent CPR.

By the 1960s, Kitchener's industrial base began to shift to the suburbs. Manufacturing in Canada had begun to suffer due to numerous economic factors, and 19th century style downtown factories, which were often rail served, were declining and being phased out in favour of decentralized systems of suburban factories which were served by both trucks and rail, or in some cases wholly relied on the trucking industry. In a turbulent strike at the Kaufman Rubber Company in downtown Kitchener in 1960, coal deliveries to the factory via an industrial spur on Victoria Street became a point of conflict, as picketers tried to prevent Grand River Railway trains from entering the factory yard. Train crews refused to cross the United Rubber Workers' picket line, so the coal train was driven by company officials, including William D. Thompson, the general manager of the railway, and escorted by the Kitchener Police. The picket line was broken and three strikers were charged with violation of the Railway Act. Within several years, footwear production for the company had shifted to Quebec after the acquisition of several smaller companies, and in 2000, the company (by then rebranded to Kaufman Footwear) declared bankruptcy.

This shift to the suburbs spurred the most extensive modification ever made to the railway's right of way. It was internally referred to as Plan No. 1251, which called for the southwest Kitchener portion of the line to be relocated from King Street to the newly built Industrial Park (today's Parkway and Trillium Industrial Park areas), cementing the shift from passengers to freight, and coinciding with the dieselization of its freight operations. The previous right of way along King Street had served early 20th century suburban residential areas like Kingsdale, and villages turned suburbs like Centreville; in contrast, the rail line's new location primarily served a new industrial park built on farm fields to the north of the former industrial village of German Mills, which had been served by the Canadian National Railway, Canadian Pacific's primary competitor. This industrial park would only later be joined by the residential and commercial area that grew up around Fairview Park Mall, which was built in 1965 as one of Kitchener's first suburban shopping malls. This shift allowed for the construction of as a separate but overlapping roadway (rather than simply a designation for King Street), obliterating much of the area's former rail infrastructure from Kitchener to Preston, and cementing the shift to an autocentric built environment. The seeds had been sown decades before, as municipal officials, who controlled the municipal right of way used for railway street running, began in the 1920s to deny the Grand River Railway's applications for renewal of their rail line's leases, forcing the railway into costly track relocations, which gradually forced the rail line further to the west of Kitchener's downtown, making it less convenient for passengers, and creating more room for the auto traffic which would prove to further interfere with railway operations.

The Grand River Railway's passenger services were an evolution from earlier streetcar services. Mainline service was half hourly since the start of the Galt and Preston Street Railway, and the Hespeler branch also received half hourly evening service in 1920.

Emerging as it did from late 19th century street railways, the Grand River Railway system relied on simple trackside shelters for passengers and short industrial spurs for freight service, while also utilizing several purpose built stations. As street running sections of track were gradually relocated, the emphasis on stations increased. One of the most significant stations was , which sat near the middle of the line and which was located at the junction with the Hespeler branch that ran along the east side of the Speed River. Preston Junction had been an operations centre since the construction of the Preston and Berlin Street Railway in 1904, hosting the steam boilers that powered its electrification system, as well as its car barns, while also functioning as a passenger transfer point between it and the Galt, Preston and Hespeler Street Railway. The passenger station was constructed in 1905. Under the consolidated Grand River Railway, Preston Junction continued to be an important station until the end of service. The Queen Street station building was replaced by a "new and attractive" brick building in November 1943, corresponding to a heavy increase in passenger traffic during the Second World War, and coming several years after the discontinuance of service to Waterloo, which turned Kitchener Queen Street into a terminal station.

Much of the Grand River Railway's track continued to function as freight track for decades after passenger service was discontinued, but significant sections were removed in the 1980s, including the Hespeler branch, of which some portions are now the Mill Run Trail. Urban sections in Kitchener Waterloo were largely also dismantled in the 1980s and replaced by the Iron Horse Trail in 1997, which features a number of plaques commemorating Kitchener's railway and industrial heritage. Perhaps most decisively, the junction that joined the GRNR and LE&N at Main Street in downtown Galt was also removed along with the LE&N track leading south to Paris, severing the original branch line laid down by the Great Western Railway in 1855, and ending rail traffic between the north and south halves of the Grand River valley. A remnant of the Grand River Railway mainline, designated as the CP Waterloo Subdivision, remains an active rail corridor. From the Canadian Pacific mainline in the south (in the form of the Galt Subdivision), the line passes north through Galt and Preston, crossing the Speed River along approximately the same route as the original Grand River Railway. North of the river, there is an industrial spur to reach a Toyota automobile factory. The line then continues along its historic path, crossing the Grand River. It eventually deviates from the historic route at Centreville, curving to the west and following the 1963 rerouting through the Parkway industrial area. After curving to the north again, it terminates, joining with the CN Huron Park Spur at an interchange yard which is overlooked by the Ion light rail station. The Grand River is also referenced in the name of Grand River Transit, which was formed in 2000 through a merger of Kitchener Transit and Cambridge Transit. It provides regional transit connections between many areas once served by the Grand River Railway. Starting in the 1990s, planners and local government officials began to revisit the idea of a rapid transit system in the region. This culminated in the Ion rapid transit light rail system which opened to the public on 21 June 2019. Ironically, this system (ION Stage 1) does not include either Galt or Preston, the original hubs for regional rail, and is instead centred on Kitchener Waterloo. It does, however, use a similar right of way in some areas as the Grand River Railway, such as along Caroline Street in Waterloo. Ion Stage 2, which as of 2019 is still in the public consultation phase, would once again provide a passenger rail connection between Galt, Preston, and Berlin (Kitchener).