by Jean Turnbull Elford writing in Upper Canada’s Last Frontier
(1982) The opening of a line between Port Huron and Chicago in 1879 brought a great increase in traffic to both the Great Western and the Grand Trunk. Three years later, the two lines amalgamated under the Grand Trunk name and obtained a right-of-way along the waterfront between Sarnia and Point Edward.
The car ferries at Point Edward started to handle all the cross-river traffic. In summer they were delayed by other shipping, and in winter ice held them up as may be seen from this newspaper account published on Friday, February 13, 1885:
“There have been no trains here from Chicago since Sunday and business is almost at a standstill on the G.T.R. The ice blockade is the worst known for a number of years.”
To overcome crossing difficulties the Grand Trunk built the St. Clair Tunnel. It opened between Sarnia and Port Huron in the fall of 1891. This major engineering achievement was in the hands of an Ontario engineer, Joseph Hobson. In building it, compressed air in conjunction with a cutting shield and a lining made of cast iron were all used together for the first time. The St. Clair was the first large underwater tunnel on the continent and the first international underwater tunnel in the world.
Specially built engines, fueled with coke to cut down on smoke, hauled the trains through the tunnel. From the outset fumes from the the engines caused accidents. In one accident, on October 10, 1904, six men lost their lives from fumes. The problem was over come in 1908 when electric engines began to haul the trains through the tunnel.
Beginning with the merger in 1882, the Sarnia _ London branch started to handle more traffic. In 1892 the railway built a line from Kingscourt Junction to Alvinston and from there to Glencoe in Middlesex. Having become unprofitable, the service from Kingscourt Junction was cut off in 1941 and that from Alvinston to Glencoe in 1965.
It was west of Kingscourt Junction that the Wanstead Wreck, Lambton’s worst rail disaster, took place. During a snow storm on the evening of December 26, 1902, the westbound Chicago flier, loaded with passengers, collided with an eastbound freight killing 38 persons.
Following this calamity the line was double tracked through to Montreal.
The boat train was the fastest one on the line. It came from Toronto every summer during the summer to bring passengers to the Northern Navigation Dock at Point Edward. From there the passengers took a week-long cruise to the head of the Lakes or a shorter one to Sault Ste. Marie. These trips were instituted before the Grand Trunk became the Canadian National Railway in 1923 and continued until the burning of the Noronic in 1949.
Other noteworthy trains were the freights that carried silk. They passed through Sarnia enroute from San Francisco to New York. Due to danger of robbery they had to be moved quickly and under guard. The Sarnia Observer gave this account of one on November 4, 1926:
“A silk train of seven cars was received today over the Grand Trunk Western Railway at Port Huron at 12:25 p.m. and at 12:45 was at Sarnua Tunnel and at 12:51 was on its way to Buffalo. This train was in charge of Roadmaster Sharp, who with two guards accompanied the train to the Niagara Frontier. Engineer McKeown and conductor L.C. Steel handled the train and expect to deliver the consignment to the Delaware and Lackawanna railroad in record time. The shipment is valued at $1,750,000.”
Iron ore, while not as valuable by the carload as silk, was a more important cargo. Beginning in 1902 lake freighters brought one into Point Edward to be shipped by rail to Hamilton. This trade continued until the opening of the new Welland Canal in 1932 made it possible for the ore carrier to sail directly to the Hamilton steel works.
The new canal also put an end to the cvarrying of stone out of Point Edward. Indiana limestone had been brought there by ship, cut, and sent east by rail. With the new canal, the stone could be sent from Indiana directly across Lake Erie for marketing in eastern Ontario. With the ore and stone trade gone, shipments going east out of Point Edward declined so drastically that the tracks between there and Blackwell were lifted in 1938.
Passenger service into Sarnia on the northern route was gradually reduced from a maximum of three trains each way daily until there was only one each way by 1955. The next year the line carried only three mixed trains each way weekly. In 1967 the Canadian National discontinued the passenger service entirely. By 1982 it was confined to that given by freights, which served Forest and Thedford from time to time.
On the London – Sarnia line during the late fifties, the diesel engine brought about great improvements. As diesels create no smoke, there was no longer any need to transfer electric engines to take trains through the tunnel. Nor was a roundhouse necessary. The coming of the diesel coincided with economic prosperity, and the marshalling yards were expanded to handle the volume of traffic.
Starting in the 1950sit became more economical to use larger box cars. Though the tunnel was enlarged in the 1960s, the biggest cars still could not use it. To accommodate them and to supplement the tunnel, car ferry service began across the St. Clair River in 1974, from the west end of Wellington Street in Sarnia to Port Huron.
Tunnel traffic had been confined to freight since the Toronto- Chicago passenger service ended in 1971. Freight service, on the other hand, increased both internationally and locally. On account of the new downriver industries, Canadian National expanded in trackage to the south. It built a spur line to Froomefield to service the Shell Oil refinery in 1951, and extended it in 1965 to the Canadian Industries (CIL) plant in Sombra Township. From that spur, another spur was put into the Petrosar plant in 1975.