Halifax and Southwestern Railway - Decline

Decline

CN passenger service ended on the South Shore on Saturday October 25, 1969 and its stations fell into disuse. In a December 22, 1982 fire, the historic H&SW passenger station in Bridgewater fell victim to an unexplained fire.

CN's former H&SW lines on Nova Scotia's South Shore and in the Annapolis Valley were proving uneconomic by the early 1980s, even for freight service. In 1982, permission was given to abandon the far end of the mainline from Liverpool to Yarmouth as well as the branch line of the former NSCR line between Bridgewater and Bridgetown via Middleton, as well as the New Germany to Caledonia. Reduced to a line running from Halifax to Liverpool, CN depended on the Bowater paper mill and the Michelin tire plant, however even these customers were unable to keep the line generating positive income.

By the late 1980s, CN was given permission to abandon the remaining line from Bridgewater to Liverpool as the Bowater pulp mill in Liverpool shifted its transportation to ocean shipping and trucks. At Bridgewater, CN built a small yard on the east side of the Lahave River and sold its extensive former yard property to a shopping mall developer. In the early 1990s even this trackage was eliminated as Michelin began to use trucks to service its plant and CN's last remaining customer in Lunenburg County was the forest products company at East River.

In 1993 the former H&SW trackage was abandoned west of Halifax's Lakeside Industrial Park, leaving only a 7 mile spur as the last reminder of this once important railway network in southern Nova Scotia. Called the Chester Spur in its employee timetable, CN freight operations to the Bayers Lake Industrial Park and Lakeside Industrial Park were focused on serving a cement depot, a scrap dealer and several other customers through a team track. In 2006, as part of its "Three-Year Rail Network Plan", CN declared its intention to discontinue service on the Chester Spur, this being the last remaining portion of the original H&SW trackage. The last freight trains operated on the spur west of Southwestern Junction through to the Lakeside Industrial Park in late 2007. The rail corridor was purchased by the Halifax Regional Municipality and by October 2009, rails at level crossings were lifted and paved over and by September 2010, all the remaining track of the CN Chester Spur had been removed and replaced by a rail trail (paved recreational pathway).