Building The International of Maine
A roughly 100 mile / 160 km gap between Mattawamkeag and Megantic required new construction to complete the Montreal-Saint John direct route.
The CPR acquired the International Railway in the mid-1880s and surveyed a line running directly from Megantic to a point on the E&NA (then leased by the Maine Central) at Mattawamkeag. This portion of new railway would cross the International Boundary between Megantic, Quebec and Jackman, Maine, thus the CPR organized two separate companies:
- The International Railway was incorporated federally in Canada for the portion between Megantic and the border. In 1886 it was sold to the Atlantic and North-West Railway, a CPR subsidiary.
- The International Railway of Maine was incorporated in the state of Maine to cross the sparsely populated Appalachian Mountains between the border and Mattawamkeag and assumed the charter of a previous company of the same name that had been organized in 1871. It was also sold to the Atlantic and North-West in 1886. A little known 374-meter (1227-foot) long steel trestle 38 meters (124 feet) above Ship Pond Stream near Onawa was replaced by a viaduct in 1931. Until 6 July 1960, railway employees along this remote line were paid from the last pay car operating in the United States or Canada.
Construction under Chief Engineer James Ross began in 1886–1887 and proceeded in both directions from various points on the route. The new line opened in June 1889 and CPR obtained trackage rights over the Maine Central from Mattawamkeag to Vanceboro, and purchased the New Brunswick Railway to acquire control of the route from Vanceboro to Saint John, as well as a branch line network in western New Brunswick and northern Maine.
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