Page 42 - ESCARPMENT MAGAZINE | Winter 2013

One Hundred and fifty-six years of railroading in Collingwood ground to an undistinguished halt on
July 15, 2011. On that date, there would be no more trains serving the growing community for the town council had
decided to decommission the part of the Barrie Collingwood Railway (BCRY) that ran from Utopia Ontario, to the
terminus at the east- end of Collingwood.
As with most to-be abandoned railways, the reason for the termination of service was strictly financial. Collingwood
taxpayers had absorbed the $425,000 cost of running the trains. This was a poor deal for ratepayers as only one
regular customer was being served by the line at the end of its run.
The engineers of the original railway project, Her Worship Sandra Cooper and Deputy Mayor Rick Lloyd, were
among the final passengers of the BCRY. At 10:30 a.m. on the railways funeral run, they were picked up at Poplar
Sideroad and rode to the end of the line of local railroading. It all ended between the Amazingly Green facility and
Canadian Mist Distillers. The last chapter closed, not with a bang, but a whine of steel on rusty track.
A buzz, unlike any other filled the British Coffee House on York Street in Toronto on the 14th of July 1834. Pipe-smok-
ing men and a few boys were greatly excited by the prospect of a railway being built in the city. One lad, of about
10 years tugged at the sleeve of an older man and asked him, “Father, what is a railway?” The mature male, not
wanting to appear uninformed just shushed his son and told him to listen and learn. *
RAILSto Hen and Chickens Harbour
ESCARPMENT HISTORY | Rails to Hen and Chickens Harbour...
B Y R I C K L E S W I C K
42 Escarpment Magazine Winter 2013