Laying the Rails Railway lines are made up of two parts: the ties and the rails. The ties are wooden planks, about six feet long. The rails are made of steel. The rails are joined to the ties and to each other by fishplates and spikes. The ties ire placed across the roadbed exactly two…

A second transcontinental. the Canadian Northern was built by 1896 and a third, the National Transcontinental took .shape in 1915. This. sudden erpan.ion was. More than the market could support and in 1923 the federal government was required to take them all over, all the lines, except those of the CPR, and place them under…

Who build the Canadian National Railway? No one built the Canadian National Railway. It formed between 1918 and 1923 after the Government of Canada purchased and/or acquired several government and privately owned railways that had gone bankrupt. On 20 December 1918, the Canadian government created the name Canadian National Railway and adopted the slogan, The…

Why did Canada build a railway? There were many reasons for building a transcontinental railway. The primary reason was to unite the forming country of Canada. Territories were becoming provinces, and provinces were joining to form a country. This union was called Confederation. A new government formed as well, and it agreed to build a…

In 1878 and 1879, the Government of Canada built the East Selkirk Roundhouse in anticipation of the coming Canadian Pacific Railway. Sanford Fleming, a surveyor for the CPR, had selected the East Selkirk/Selkirk site for the railway to cross the Red River. This area had high ground and was not susceptible to flooding like the…