Log lift on the Nosbonsing and Nipissing Railway

The Nosbonsing and Nipissing Railway (N&N) was a

portage railway A portage railway is a short and possibly isolated section of railway used to bypass a section of unnavigable river or between two water bodies which are not directly connected. Cargo from waterborne vessels is unloaded, loaded onto conventional ...

constructed by

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...

lumber baron A business magnate, also known as a tycoon, is a person who has achieved immense wealth through the ownership of multiple lines of enterprise. The term characteristically refers to a powerful entrepreneur or investor who controls, through perso ...

John Rudolphus Booth John Rudolphus Booth (April 5, 1827 – December 8, 1925) was a Canadian lumber tycoon and railroad baron. He controlled logging rights for large tracts of forest land in central Ontario, and built the Canada Atlantic Railway (from Georgian ...

. The line connected

Lake Nipissing Lake Nipissing (; french: lac Nipissing, oj, Gichi-nibiinsing-zaaga’igan) is a lake in the Canadian province Within the geographical areas of Canada, the ten provinces and three territories are sub-national administrative divisions under ...

with

Lake Nosbonsing Lake Nosbonsing (French: ''Lac Nosbonsing'') is a lake in the municipalities of Bonfield, Chisholm, and East Ferris in Nipissing District in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It is near the City of North Bay, is the source of the Kaibuskong River ...

to allow lumber to be portaged onto the

Mattawa River The Mattawa River is a river in central Ontario, Canada. It flows east from Trout Lake east of North Bay and enters the Ottawa River at the town of Mattawa. Counting from the head of Trout Lake, it is 76 km in length. The river's name come ...

, and from there to the

Ottawa River The Ottawa River (french: Rivière des Outaouais, Algonquin: ''Kichi-Sìbì/Kitchissippi'') is a river in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. It is named after the Algonquin word 'to trade', as it was the major trade route of Eastern ...

. It allowed timber from a wide area across

central Ontario Central Ontario is a secondary region of Southern Ontario in the Canadian province of Ontario that lies between Georgian Bay and the eastern end of Lake Ontario. The population of the region was 1,123,307 in 2016; however, this number does not in ...

to be sent to Booth's mill in Ottawa, at that time the largest

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes (dimensi ...

in the world."Track and Tower" brochure, Friends of Algonquin Park

History

The line was completed in August 1884 and initially operated as a private line. However, when the

Northern and Pacific Junction Railway The Northern and Pacific Junction Railway (N&PJ) is a historic railway located in northern Ontario, Canada. It connected the Northern Railway of Canada's endpoint in Gravenhurst to the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) at Nipissing Junction, near No ...

(N&PJ) began construction of their north-south line in the same area, Booth officially chartered the N&N in March 1886. The N&PJ had already secured crossing rights, but had to renegotiate them with the newly chartered N&N. The N&PJ, the joint project of the Northern Railway of Canada and the Hamilton and North Western Railway, were not amused. Their negotiation position was to threaten to rip up the N&N tracks. Booth responded by purchasing a diamond intersection and giving it to the Northern to install. However, the N&N retained the crossing rights, which allowed them to hold up Northern traffic at their leisure. Traffic on the line was initially very busy, with the single locomotive hauling a train of 22 flatbed cars back and forth between the two ends. When it arrived at the western end with the empty train, it would drop the empty cars off on a siding, then switch to the mainline to pull eleven filled cars out onto the line, drawing another eleven into the loading station. Once these were loaded the train left for the eastern end while the empty cars are pulled into the station by hand. At the eastern end the logs were simply rolled down into Nosbonsing, the entire operation taking two men only two and a half minutes. Typically ten trips were made per day, with a total of 4,000 logs. The rate increased to 14 a day at one point, at which point the crews went on strike. This railway was abandoned in 1912 with the ending of major logging operations in the area. The charter of the N&N was transferred to Booth's Egan Estates Railway, near Madawaska. In 1914, the original N&N railbed was used as the basis for Booth Road.

Route

Nipissing is the lower of the two lakes, with a steep embankment on its eastern side that leads upward to a table of land. From there to Nosbonsing the land remains fairly flat. A long jack ladder was built at Nipissing to haul logs up the bank into a large loading station, a roofed but otherwise open building . The ladder was powered by a waterwheel in a large flume with water supplied from the adjacent Wasi River, which also drove a pump when needed for fire fighting or refilling the locomotive. Today the route has a number of names, starting as Wasi Falls Road at the west end, becoming Route 654 until it crosses

Ontario Highway 11 King's Highway 11, commonly referred to as Highway 11, is a Ontario Provincial Highway Network, provincially maintained highway in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. At , it is the second longest highway in the ...

where it becomes Lake Nosbonsing Road, and finally becoming Booth Road again just short of the eastern end at Lake Nosbonsing in the town of Astorville.

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