Dominion Atlantic Railway - Creation Through Merger

Creation Through Merger

The DAR was created on October 1, 1894, through a merger of two end-to-end systems. the Windsor and Annapolis Railway (W&A) and the Western Counties Railway (WCR). The larger and more successful W&A bought out the rival WCR for $265,000. The merger was authorized by the provincial legislature in 1893.

The W&A owned the track between its namesake port towns of Windsor and Annapolis Royal, and had also negotiated trackage rights to operate over the Intercolonial Railway's former Nova Scotia Railway "Windsor Branch" between Windsor Junction and Windsor, as well as on the IRC mainline from Windsor Junction into Halifax. The WCR on the other hand, operated between Yarmouth and Digby. The new DAR thus had a gap in its trackage between Annapolis Royal and Digby, which would otherwise be continuous from Yarmouth to Halifax. The gap was eventually closed in the early 1890s with government assistance.

Although the DAR technically connected to the Intercolonial Railway at Windsor, the IRC rarely operated on this line and left it to the DAR beyond the mainline connection at |Windsor Junction. The DAR system also connected with the Midland Railway at Windsor, the Nova Scotia Central Railway (NSCR ) and the Middleton and Victoria Beach Railway (M&VBR) at Middleton, and the Halifax and Southwestern Railway (H&SW) at Yarmouth. The NSCR and M&VBR were both eventually purchased by the H&SW.

The DAR also had a branch north of Kentville to Kingsport, the former Cornwallis Valley Railway completed in 1889. A westward extension of this branch was started in 1905 on a line formally chartered as the North Mountain Railway from a junction on the Kingsport line at Centreville west to Weston. It was completed in 1914.

Also in 1905, the DAR purchased the Midland Railway, giving a more direct connection between Windsor and the Intercolonial Railway at Truro where lines headed east to Pictou and Cape Breton Island, and west to New Brunswick.