Railway Decline in Southwestern Nova Scotia
In 1981, Canadian National Railway, successor to the Halifax and Southwestern Railway, abandoned its trackage which connected to the DAR at Yarmouth and Middleton. On May 22, 1986, the DAR abandoned its tracks between Truro and Mantua, just east of Windsor where it continued to serve a gypsum quarry. In 1988, CPR announced that all of its money-losing services east of Montreal would be grouped under a new internal marketing division called Canadian Atlantic Railway (of which the DAR was one component, along with CPR properties in New Brunswick, Maine, and the Eastern Townships of Quebec).
The fate of any possible resurgence in freight and passenger traffic on the tracks west of Kentville was sealed with the construction of final links in the all-weather Highway 101 between Kentville and Yarmouth in the mid to late 1980s; in addition, there were several large steel bridges on this section of the railroad that were nearing the end of their maintenance lifecycle, thus requiring major expenditures. By 1989, almost the only trains using this portion of the DAR were the Via RDCs, which was experiencing passenger declines due to recent highway expansion and competing bus services, as well as changes to Via connecting train schedules. In the January 15, 1990, cuts to Via Rail by the government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, the RDC service between Halifax and Yarmouth was abolished.
On March 27, 1990, CPR abandoned the DAR's trackage west of Kentville to Yarmouth, concentrating efforts on the more-profitable eastern end of the DAR which hauled gypsum and served a concentration of industries in New Minas as well as a short remnant of the Kingsport line between Kentville and Steam Mill Village. On September 16, 1993, the DAR operated the last freight train in Kentville and by October had reduced its western-most trackage to New Minas. The locomotive shop facilities were moved that month from Kentville to Windsor.
Read more about this topic: Dominion Atlantic Railway
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