Grand River Railway

From TrainSpottingWorld, for Rail fans everywhere

The Grand River Railway was an electric railway which served what is now the Region of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, including the cities of Berlin (later Kitchener), Waterloo, and Galt, and the towns of Preston and Hespeler (the last three of which are now the city of Cambridge).

The earliest sections of what became the Grand River Railway entered service in 1894, while the final name was adopted in 1914. Most of the railway's rolling stock was built by the Preston Car & Coach Company. Its operations consisted originally of streetcars, but on-street tracks were gradually replaced with reserved rights of way, which formed the majority of the railway's network by the time it ceased service.

The railway ended passenger services on 23 April 1955. Freight trains continued running until 1 October 1961, when the tracks were taken over by parent company Canadian Pacific Railway diesel trains, which still run along some routes today, mostly carrying cars from the Toyota factory in north Cambridge to a downtown freight yard.

In 2000, the Grand River Railway's name was echoed in the creation of Grand River Transit to unify bus services in the Region of Waterloo.

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