THE TRENT RIVER ORE CARS

and the 1881 Fatal Accident

By George Parker,  Sifton-Cook Heritage Centre,  Cobourg, Ontario

This is a story about the wooden ore cars built by James Crossen for the 'Cobourg, Peterborough & Marmora Railway & Mining Company' in the 1860's. The cars were designed to carry iron ore from Blairton Mine to Cobourg. Remnants of these early railcars have miraculously survived because of an operational mishap in 1881 at the railway's loading pier at Trent River Narrows. The accident left five of the cars submerged - and preserved! - in the river for the following 99 years. This is the story of The Trent River Ore Cars.

A New Name, A New Focus For The Railway: Iron Ore!
The story unfolds with the demise in 1861 of the Cobourg & Peterborough Railway's impossibly long (2.6 miles!) wooden bridge across Rice Lake. The loss of the link to Peterborough was a crippling blow to the railway and within a few years it was forced to reorganize, bringing in new investors and with them a new name: The Cobourg, Peterborough & Marmora Railway & Mining Company (CP&MR&MC). This strung-out title aptly reflected the railway's new focus: mining and shipping iron ore from the Canadian hinterland all the way to the centre of the booming steel industry in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The Plan For Getting The Ore Out
The strategy was to exploit the reserves of the "Big Ore Bed" located on the southwest shore Crowe Lake, near the village of Marmora. The idea was that railcars would carry the ore from the Blairton Mine (named after Blair, the largest shareholder of the railway at that time) to Trent River Narrows, where it would be unloaded into 60 ton barges. The barges would be hauled by the railway's steamship - the Otonabee (later the lsaac Butts) - from Trent River Narrows through the new lock at Hastings, to the wharf at Harwood. At Harwood, the ore would be transferred via "steam elevator" back into ore cars for the journey to the Cobourg harbour. At the harbour, the ore would be dumped directly from a raised trestle into waiting lake schooners for the trip across Lake Ontario to Rochester. More railcars would then take the ore on the final leg of its' journey - from Rochester to Pittsburgh. The freight charge from Blairton to Pittsburgh was estimated to be $4 per ton at that time - equivalent to about $75 a ton in today's currency.  Other schooners would sail the ore through the Welland Canal to Erie Pennsylvania.

Production At Blairton Mine Begins!
Everything was in place by the spring of 1868, and production at Blairton Mine quickly ramped up to about 20,000 tons of iron ore per year by 1870. Much of the mining was done by hand, with ore being loaded into the railcars using planks and wheelbarrows. Mined rocks were selected individually, the plan idea being that those showing roughly 60% ore or better would be shipped. The others would be discarded, sometimes into the nearby lake. Trains of twenty five cars each made the journey between Blairton and Trent River Narrows,each railcar carrying 5 tons of ore. John Laskey Aunger, a manager at the mine, wrote that at peak times, three 25-car trains would make the 9 mile journey each day. To handle this tonnage, (since there was no storage capability at any of the three transfer points), the company used as many as eight barges on the Trent River Narrows - Harwood run, and had sufficient railcars in place at Harwood to keep the ore steadily moving on to Cobourg and beyond.

Crossen Railcars Haul The Iron Ore
The rail cars which hauled all of this iron ore were built by James Crossen of Cobourg - his first contract for the construction of rail cars.   The arrangements for making these cars are documented in a book about Crossen's railcar building activities, 'Wooden Cars On Steel Rails'  by Ted Rafuse.  The cars were assembled near the Cobourg wharf using locally available wood (red oak) and iron fittings made by Crossen in his nearby foundry. Larger iron components - wheels, axles, bearings, coupling links, brake assemblies - were made elsewhere (see "Wheels" below), and brought to Cobourg for installation on the railcars.

Market For Blairton Ore Declines
The railcars appear to have served their purpose well, as Blairton Mine grew to be the biggest iron ore mine in the country. But in 1873, the outlook for the mine darkened considerably with a) the onset of an economic depression, and b) the discovery of very large deposits of iron ore at the head of Lake Superior - in Minnesota and Wisconsin. The relatively small-scale output from Blairton Mine could not compete with this vast new source of iron ore - even though the reserves of ore at B1airton were far from depleted (and are still not depleted). Nevertheless, with a dwindling market for its ore, production at the mine declined. The last regular shipment of ore from the Blairton Mine was in the late 1870's.

The 1881 Accident
By the early 1880's, efforts were being made to wrap up operations at the mine, which included shipping out the final loads of stock-piled ore. It was during that period - in 1881 - that a fatal accident occurred at the loading pier at Trent River Narrows. As ore cars were being 'brought into position for unloading into the two barges sitting below the cribs, the train overshot the mark, and five ore cars went off the end of the pier into the river. One man was swept into the water and died. The story about the accident was reported in the newspapers at the time, but no attempt was made to retrieve the cars from the river: the mine was closing and the cars would not have been worth the effort required to hoist them out of the water. They remained submerged.

The Railway Struggles On
With the mine now closed, the railway struggled to survive, eventually being reorganized in the mid- 1880's as the Cobourg, Peterborough & Blairton Railway & Mining Company. In the 1890's, the CP&BR&MC was absorbed into the Grand Trunk system - which in turn became part of Canadians National in the 1920's. Blairton became a ghost town.

The Story Of The 1881 Accident "Resurfaces"
With the tracks taken up and the trains gone, the prominence of the story about the ore car accident at Trent River Narrows gradually receded. Details about what had happened were still passed along by those who lived in the area, but no one was entirely sure what lay on the river bed. It wasn't until 1980 - when the story came to the attention of a retired mining engineer Arthur Dunn - that the ore car story finally "resurfaced". Dunn was conducting research into the Marmora Iron Works, and was intrigued by the story from 99 years earlier. He managed to persuade Parks Canada to use their resources to retrieve the remains of the ore cars from the river- the Trent River being a federally regulated waterway.

Parks Canada Retrieves Ore Cars in October 1980
The retrieval of the ore cars took place in October 1980, using Trent-Severn Waterway staff and equipment, along with the services of a commercial diver from Peterborough. The remains of four cars were removed from the water that day.

One frame was largely intact, with wheels and axles. Another frame was missing its wheels. And there were additional sets of wheels and axles, broken bits of wood, and loose pieces of iron. Very roughly speaking, it was considered to be the remains of four cars. The remains of a fifth car - which had been identified months earlier - could not be located as the water on the day of the retrieval was particularly murky. Despite the fact that both frames had lost their ore boxes, and that the wood was considerably eroded from 99 years of water current running by, those involved with the retrieval were very pleased with what had turned up.

Memos were soon in circulation at Parks Canada discussing how the remains of the cars should be restored so that they could be used for an exhibit. But officials were also worried about the deterioration of the wooden frames - now that they were out of the water - and so a decision was made to re-submerge the best preserved car in October 1980 until such time as a comprehensive restoration plan could be implemented. The car was duly re- submerged, but when Parks Canada divers went to check on this car in October of 1981, it was no longer in the place where they had left it submerged, and it could not be located. It was reported stolen, and it has not been seen since - above or below water.
Meanwhile, many of the remaining iron pieces - wheels.axles, bearings brake rigging latches, bolts, braces -. were successfully restored. In some cases - the wheels, for instance - the restored pieces looked as if they were brand new!

Recreating The Ore Cars from Artifacts

I,  with my colleague,  Ken Willocks,   from the Sifton-Cook Heritage Centre,  was fortunate enough to be able to view the artifacts in Cornwall.  By closely examining the one remaining frame,  together with all of the loose pieces of wood and iron,  we were able to reconstruct what we think one of the cars originally looked like.  Since there are no drawings available depicting these cars,  and the one photo we have is taken from a distance,  it was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. One by one,  we examined the various components.