Newfoundland Railway - Legacy

Legacy

Currently, the former Newfoundland Railway station in St. John's hosts the Railway Coastal Museum. Numerous towns across the island have preserved railway equipment on display.

With a few exceptions, the roadbed of the entire of the main line is now the T'Railway Provincial Park, a cross-island multi-use trail for hikers, skiers, and users of ATVs and snowmobiles. The Trinity Loop Amusement Park operated a miniature train for tourists on Trinity Loop, one of the few remaining places on Newfoundland with tracks still in place. The park closed down and abandoned in 2005 due to lack of interest. Since then, all of the buildings have been heavily vandalized and Hurricane Igor washed away part of the park, including a large section of the rail bed - leaving parts of the tracks suspended precariously in the air. Local railway buffs have been pushing government to keep the park as an historic site but they said they were not interested. There is currently a sale in progress of the land, but the fate of the Trinity Loop is not yet known.

Some of the rolling stock was converted to a narrower gauge (914 mm, 36 inches) and sold to the White Pass and Yukon Route railway, which coincidentally reopened for service in 1988. Gravel cars used by WP&YR are still painted in CN orange; unconfirmed information indicates that some Newfoundland passenger cars were converted into passenger cars of vintage appearance for WP&YR.

The province of Newfoundland and Labrador still has railway transportation, although it is not provided on Newfoundland. The Quebec, North Shore, and Labrador Railway operates between Sept-Îles, QC and the mining region of Labrador West. A former QNSL line, now owned and operated by Tshiuetin Rail Transportation, serves the former mining town of Schefferville, QC, passing through Labrador. QNSL also connects with Newfoundland and Labrador's other active railway, the Wabush Lake Railway.