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St. Lawrence And Atlantic RailwayThe St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railway was a historic Canadian railway that ran from the International Boundary between Quebec and Vermont (near Norton, Vermont) to Richmond, Quebec and on into Montreal. The St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railway was actually under the same ownership as its U.S. counterpart, the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad, to which it linked with at Norton and continued through Berlin, New Hampshire to Lewiston, Maine and tidewater at Portland. Both lines operated as a single system and was first proposed to run between Portland and Sherbrooke, Quebec by Portland entrepreneur John Poor in 1844. Portland was desperate to connect its ice-free port with Montreal and Maine was at risk of being eclipsed by a similar proposal running from nearby Boston, Massachusetts. Montreal saw an advantage in linking with the smaller port at Portland and Poor's idea became a reality when the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railway/Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad system was completed by 1853. The system was promptly merged into the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) and formed part of the business case for that system's expansion of its mainline west from Montreal to Toronto and on to Chicago, as well as a mainline east to Quebec City (Levis) and Riviere-du-Loup. The increased traffic between Portland and Levis to Montreal placed significant demands on the small ferry service across the St. Lawrence River - this would be replaced by the spectacular Victoria Bridge by 1860. The GTR line to Portland was built during the boom period for New England textile mills and various mill towns in northern New England soon saw an influx of French Canadian workers who quickly found work in the region. The GTR's bankruptcy in the early 1920s saw it nationalized by the Canadian federal government, which merged it into the nascent Canadian National Railways (CNR). Unfortunately for Portland, the CNR also included various other rail lines to ice-free Canadian ports in the Maritimes, notably Halifax, Nova Scotia, and their now ex-GTR mainline to Montreal soon became a secondary mainline under CNR as traffic dropped signficantly. Despite the decline in traffic being handled over the line, its strategic connection to the Atlantic ocean for Montreal saw another use arise during the 20th century when a Canadian company built a pipeline to carry oil from terminals in Portland to refineries in Montreal; the pipeline followed the GTR route along certain parts and is still in use today. CN (acronym/name change post-1960) continued to operate the Portland-Sherbrooke line as its Berlin Subdivision but traffic continued to decline and by the late 1980s, following deregulation of the U.S. railroad industry, it became a candidate for divestiture to a shortline operator. In 1989, a new company St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad (AAR reporting mark: SLA) took over operation of the Island Pond, Vermont-Portland section and several years later saw this extended to the border at Norton. In the early 1990s, following Canadian deregulation, the shortline operator formed a subsidiary St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad (Qubec) (AAR reporting mark: SLQ) to operate the remaining line from the border at Norton through to Montreal. Today, the shortline operator of the Portland-Montreal line is a subsidiary of Genesee Wyoming Corporation.
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