Yesterday, I was in the Newfoundland port and capital of St. Johns and visited the Railway and Coastal Museum
The Newfoundland Railway was built late in the Victorian era from St John's on the eastern seaboard of the island of Newfoundland though the sparsely populated interior of the island. Half a dozen branches were built, with a couple further proposed but not built / completed. Competition and a second station in St John's ensured - though there remained just a single main line, with passenger trains taking some 26 hours to make the journey all the way (some 300 miles) to Port aux Basques on the west of the island for the ferry crossing to the mainland.
The economics of the line were such that it was supported by the Government of Newfoundland (a
UK▸ colony at the time) from 1923, through pressure from the private company that was loosing money had over fist – to the extent they shut it down for a week to force the government through.
The second world war brought tremendous activity, including construction traffic for Gander airport; after the way - in 1949 - Newfoundland became a pat of Canada (the final addition) and the railway became a part of the Canadian National Railway. Between 1953 and 1956 all the steam locomotives were replaced by diesels. Personalised pullman meals were replaced by a common catering offering right across Canada. The coming of the private motor car for the masses in the following years lead to s shrinkage of traffic, and in 1968 passenger trains were supplemented by buses. Passengers apparently preferred the buses five to one, and the final main line passenger train ran the following year. Which left freight on the main line, and mixed trains on some of the branches. There were some short runs on the main line - for example local runs out of Port aux Basques; I'm not sure when they ceased.
Come the 1980s, and the remaining parts of the system - especially the branches - were in a poor state. Branches fell in the early 1980s, and the final main line train ran in 1988, closing the entire system. Through remote country, the infrastructure cost of maintaining rail and building road was high, and the savings made by closing the railway and letting the infrastructure return to nature (or rather become a walking path) allowed road improvements to be financed from what had been fairly basic up to that point.
What's left? The Station building set amongst the dockside roads in St Johns. The lower floor a small but well done museum, the upper floors let to a business. 2 carriages and a diesel locomotive outside on a piece of track just long enough to save them the indignity of being on bare earth, and a maintenance vehicle on another short piece. I understand a steam locomotive is preserved similarly at Corner Brook, together with another small museum. Walking around St Johns and the dockyard area, you wouldn't otherwise imagine there had ever been a railway there, even though it was still operation as recently as 1988 - St John Station closed after Melksham had been re-opened!
With the exception of that last comment – the railway line closing in Newfoundland and a time of the first (Speller) re-openings in the UK, I am struck by the similarity of dates in the UK and in Newfoundland:
* The more remote rail lines opening late in the Victorian Era
* Problems after the first world war resulting in a reorganisation / grouping in 1923
* High activity during the second world war, but leaving a system that needed a structural admin change in 1948/9
* Dieselisation / modernisation in the 1950s
* A failure of modernisation to save the whole system, resulting in significant reductions in the 1960s.
Then it changes... in Newfoundland, the system was swept away in the 1980s... is that what would have happened under Serpell... in England, with no rails beyond Plymouth of even Exeter, for example – loss of the complete Cornwall network. Will the Canadians regret loosing quite so much rail in the future, as we do for Beeching?
