and passenger trains no longer cross them. The most interesting and photogenic view from land rests in a small park in Les Coteaux, where a single-span truss carries the tracks over a crumbling abandoned lock on the old Lachine Canal.
Carrying the CNR over the Rivière-des-Prairies just beyond the Pointe-aux-Trembles station northeast of Montreal are two impressive trestles of over 350 metres and 290 metres respectively, separated by Île Boudan, with a combined total of thirteen through-arch truss spans.
But perhaps the most famous of Montreal’s bridges is the Victoria Bridge. Throughout the 1850s railway building was frenzied. Tracks radiated from the south shore of the St. Lawrence, while Montreal, across the wide river, was fast becoming a transportation and commercial hub. Ferrying trains across the river or by winter rails on the ice was cumbersome and uneconomical. A permanent bridge from Montreal over the river was essential for trains to access the rails that linked with the Atlantic ports. And so, in 1853, the GTR hired one of the continent’s most revered bridge engineers, Robert Stephenson, to come up with the impossible: a bridge over the St. Lawrence, some 2.5 kilometres across. Three thousand workers picked up their tools and started construction.
The original design was for a tubular structure, enclosed on the sides and the top. But, as with the Sainte-Anne bridge, the design was fatally flawed. With the increasing use of coal as a fuel, the dense smoke became trapped in the tunnel. So, to no-one’s surprise, the tubes were replaced in 1897–98 with a series of through trusses resting on twenty-four stone piers. It became known as the Victoria Jubilee Bridge, the longest railway bridge in the world at the time.
Modern times brought modern changes. With the auto age, the bridge was widened in 1927 to accommodate motor vehicles. Then, in 1959, with the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the river rose to cover much of the iconic stone piers. In addition, a second bypass approach was added to the southern approach with a second lift bridge, so that trains might use one set of tracks while the other set rose into the air as ocean freighters passed below them.
The Quebec Bridge
This massive span of nearly six hundred metres is considered to be the world’s longest cantilever railway bridge. But that engineering feat was achieved at a deadly price. Construction began in 1898, but a fatal design went unnoticed, and in 1907, as the bridge was nearing completion, the mighty structure crashed down with a roar, killing or drowning seventy-five workers. The following year, the Quebec Bridge Company took over the project, and in 1910 began the construction anew. In 1916, as the centre span was being lifted into place, the bridge collapsed again, killing thirteen. The bridge finally opened in 1917 as part of the NTR’s western main line. The NTR’s Bridge station stood at the north shore where VIA Rail’s Sainte-Foy station now sits.
When the ICR (which later became part of the GTR) built its line between Charny and Chaudiere Junction on the west side of the Chaudiere River, it erected an impressive eight-span through-truss bridge high above the foaming rapids below.
The deadly cantilever bridge over the St. Lawrence River at Quebec City is the world’s longest cantilever bridge.
Quebec’s Northern Bridges
Many of the railways that reached into the mountains and clay plains of northern Quebec were colonization lines, built to lure settlers from the overcrowded farmlands along the St. Lawrence River Valley. The line used by the P’tit Train du Nord, constructed between 1891 and 1902, is now Quebec’s most popular cycling and skiing trail, but has few significant bridges. It does, however, offer what may be the last wooden trestle in the province — an eighty-metre bridge that trail users encounter upon entering the terminus of Mont-Laurier.
The Pontiac and Pacific Junction Railway (PPJ) line constructed through the Pontiac region of Quebec, west of Aylmer, presents one fairly modest, but nonetheless historic, iron two-span through-truss bridge. Located where the trail approaches the now-silent mill town of Davidson, a short distance from Fort Coulonge. The line was completed in 1888 and abandoned in 1983. The bridge, known as the “Black Bridge,” forms part of the PPJ cycling trail.
As the NTR made its way through the mountains of western and northern Quebec, the construction teams encountered many rivers and lakes that needed to be bridged. Between Hervey-Jonction and La Tuque, the tracks cross the highest trestle used by a passenger train in the province. The bridge runs over the Rivière du Milieu, and is visible only from the train. About fifty kilometres north of the divisional point of Fitzpatrick, the line crosses a system of causeways and trestles that combined extend roughly four kilometres along the Flamond River. From the divisional point and junction at Senneterre, the CNR, in 1937, extended branch lines southwesterly to Val-D’Or and Noranda to access the gold and mineral deposits being extracted there. To cross a series of rivers and lakes, the CNR erected three steel bridges between Val D’Or and Noranda, all of which lie immediately beside Highway 117. The longest crosses the Thomson River, and consists of three through trusses.
The CNR didn’t always enjoy success with its bridges. While constructing the three-hundred-metre bridge over the Okidodosik River, the structure had an unnerving habit of turning on its side due to the seemingly bottomless muskeg through which they were trying to build it.
The CN line to the Gaspé exhibits a string of impressive bridges, including a 230-metre structure at Grand Riviére, another of 180 metres over the river at Port-Daniel, and a 250-metre link across L’Anse-à-Beaufils River.
The Trestles
Like the bridges of western Canada, many in Quebec are high, awe-inspiring trestles above wide valleys. The famous trestle that crosses the Sainte-Ursule Falls near Shawinigan is but one. It consists of two trestles, really — one that crosses the falls themselves, which is the shorter of the two, and another, longer segment that rises high above what was once the original river bed before the course of the water was altered by an earthquake. The trestle can be seen from the footpath in Parc des Chutes de Sainte-Ursules or from the VIA train that rumbles overhead. The structure was erected by the CNoR in 1901 as part of the route between Montreal and the Lac-Saint-Jean area. The bridge stretches for three hundred metres and rises more than forty above the river below.
Such massive trestles were not just confined to the interior regions either. As the NTR edged westward from Quebec City in 1907, it followed the shore of the St. Lawrence before swinging inland to cross northern Quebec and Ontario. On what is today the outskirts of Quebec City, a massive trestle crosses the Cap Rouge River on a series of steel piers. Nearly one and a half kilometres in length, the bridge rises more than thirty metres above the river. This impressive structure is easily viewed from Rue Saint Félix or Parc de Lorraine situated at its base.
On the Mattawa to Témiscaming branch of the CPR, the trestle at Beauchesne was constructed in 1955, when the tracks were relocated to accommodate a new dam on the Ottawa River. It may not be as long as the others, but it soars more than thirty metres above the Beauchesne River. It can be seen from a logging road about thirteen kilometres southeast of the town of Témiscaming.
The CNoR Crosses the Ottawa River
In extending its line across western Quebec and into eastern Ontario, the CNoR found that it needed to cross the Ottawa River in three places. The first bridge, crossing at Hawkesbury, Ontario, no longer exists. Further west of Ottawa the line crossed the river from the Ontario side at Fitzroy Harbour into the Pontiac region of Quebec. This roughly five-hundred- metre long bridge is made up primarily of two through Pratt truss spans. The next crossing to the west was the five-hundred-metre bridge from Portage du Fort to the Ontario side. Completed in 1915, it consisted of ten deck spans and two truss spans. In 2013 the CNR announced its intention to abandon the bridges and the entire line. To view either bridge, it is necessary to
