Cobourg and Peterborough Railway - The Americans Intervene, and Grand Trunk Takes Over

The Americans Intervene, and Grand Trunk Takes Over

After the bridge had collapsed, a group of United States investors of the Port Hope, Lindsay, and Beaverton Railway bought remaining portion of the rail line, and the Marmora Iron Mine, and renamed it the Cobourg, Peterborough & Marmora Railway & Mining Company in 1867. The railway would later get an extension to Trent Narrows on the Trent River, and further north to the iron mine in Blairton, while barges would load the coal from the trains onto the Trent River, and sail down the river and Rice Lake to the port at Harwood, where they would continue their journey to Cobourg. This would be moderately successful, until the economic crisis of 1873 that struck North America. While the town of Cobourg continued to pressure Peterborough to help it rebuild the Rice lake trestle bridge after 1873, Peterborough was reluctant to do so, due to having other railroad projects to attend to. The CP&MR&MC would later go bankrupt in 1880. This would not be the end of the railroad, yet.

In 1885, a Belleville business man purchased the railroad company for $30,000, and renamed it the Cobourg, Blairton & Marmora Railway & Mining Company. The company quickly found itself in financial distress from a lack of investment, from depletion of the forests nearby, and the depletion of the iron mine near Blairton and Havelock. In 1893, the railroad's (and town of Cobourg's) suffering was ended when the railroad was merged with the Grand Trunk Railway, now today's Canadian National Railway. Grand Trunk Railway may have purchased the Cobourg railway to gain access to its harbour, as it did not have any previous track leasage or ports there, and used its rail link to Harwood on rare occasions until the early 1910s. With the start of World War I in 1914, this stretch of railroad was torn up, and the rails were transferred overseas to be used in France.

When the Trent-Severn Waterway was constructed in 1920, the lake was flooded, and the land causeway that was formed along the collapsed bridge was submerged. The rails to the Cobourg harbour were removed in the 1980s.