Planning
The plan for a
railway and shipping terminal at Greenbank near Point Pleasant
Park was announced with great fan-fare at a Board of Trade
luncheon on October 30, 1912.
The
route chosen by F. W. Cowie, the federal government engineer,
called for a double track line branching off the Intercolonial
Railway (I C R) at Three Mile House, Fairview, on Bedford Basin,
curving southwest, around the city and running through the most
attractive residential district bordering on the Northwest Arm.
The Federal Government's engineers had prepared four proposals
for combining an ocean and a rail terminal, even one located in
Dartmouth, but they were well prepared to forestall objections to
their preferred plan entailing the line through Halifax's South
End residential district. They promised a line going below ground
level at just above Quinpool Road, and hidden in a cutting at
depths varying from 35-60 feet to eliminate nuisance from smoke
and noise. And they promised "artistic" bridges on all
intersecting streets to obviate level crossings.
Construction
The official start-up date was to be July 31,1913. However, it may have been a
token beginning because little equipment was on hand till nearly
a month later. On August 21,1913, the Herald reported "thirty-eight dumping cars, two locomotives and two steam shovels' were
on their way to the city.
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Steam shovel used in construction (P.A.N.S.)
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Work began first at the Fairview end of the line on Bedford
Basin, and a few weeks later at the Harbour end, at Greenbank
near Point Pleasant Park. The work trains from the Fairview end discharged
their cargo into Bedford Basin to build the freight-marshalling
yards. Those from the Greenbank end dumped the rock into the
Harbour where some of it was used to build the breakwater.
Trestle bridges put up
at street crossings until completion of permanent bridges were
undoubtedly viewed with some trepidation by what were then called
"autoists" and also by passengers on the street railway along
Quinpool Road.
By the time the work was completed there were sixteen handsome
concrete bridges. The contractors proudly advertised that the
longest single span was 144 feet, and the longest bridge, at
Young Avenue, was over 210 feet.
The two work crews finally met sometime in the fall of 1917.
That the work had gone doggedly the war years was to prove
providential after the Halifax Explosion on December 6, 1917,
destroying the North Street Rai1way Station and the lines
leading to it. But for the new line, relief workers, medical
supplies, food, and the hundreds of other necessities would
have been much slower reaching the wounded and homeless.
The first official passenger train, the Maritime Express, steamed
out of the still incomplete new station on December 22, 1918,
carrying a distinguished group of governmental and business
dignitaries bound for Fairview, thus ceremonially inaugurating
the new service.
Extracted from "South End Railway Cutting: Report No. 2 of the Area Studies Groups", Pierre Taschereau, Halifax Field Naturalists News, No. 27, Spring 1982.
