You’re sitting at a rail crossing on Highway 3 just east of Cayuga on a family trip heading to the beaches of Lake Erie in the summer of 1954. You hear the horns blowing from the train approaching and spot the headlight on the lead locomotive, coming towards the crossing at a terrific pace.

The two-tone grey streamlined diesel locomotive is emblazoned with white stripes on its nose as it speeds past at 80 miles an hour, with its passenger coaches reflecting the sun from their fluted stainless steel sides.

In an instant the train has crossed, trailing papers and dust in its wake.

In this exhilarating moment before a day in the sun and sand, you have witnessed the passage of the Empire State Express; one of the crack passenger trains of the New York Central Railway.

The New York Central? In Southern Ontario?

When we think of railroads in Canada, we naturally think of Canadian National and Canadian Pacific. There have been smaller railroads such as Ontario Northland, Algoma Central, and the British Columbia Railway, but for more than 100 years, several U.S.-based railroads operated both passenger and freight trains through the corn and tobacco fields of Ontario between Buffalo and Detroit.

In the heady rail-building years of the 1850s and 1860s, railroad magnates were in fierce competition to get goods and passengers from the eastern U.S. to the untapped resources and land of the west.

Rather than go around the bottom of Lake Erie, the shorter distance through Southern Ontario was sought with little thought to any international boundaries.

The first link to capture this lucrative New York City-Chicago traffic was the Canada Southern Railway, built in the early 1870s with the first train running from Amherstburg in the west to Fort Erie in the east in 1873.

In the next decade, the Michigan Central Railroad took over operations of the Canada Southern and, in 1904, acquired a 999-year lease of the line. In 1930 the MC was absorbed into the giant New York Central, which continued to improve the physical plant while running both freight and passenger trains through the farms of Southern Ontario.

There were several stations and whistle stops along the line, and one could catch a ride on one of the NYC’s “Great Steel Fleet” at Waterford with a connection from the Hamilton-based Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railway, which was part of the NYC.

Further west, riders on the London & Port Stanley could travel either east or west on the NYC from a connection at St. Thomas.

About half way between the international boundaries of New York State and Michigan, St. Thomas was the main terminal and shop facility. Locomotives, both steam and diesel, were stored and serviced in the St. Thomas shops until the end of rail service.

The Midwest U.S. carrier Wabash wanted its eastern terminus in Buffalo, not Detroit, and in 1897 it negotiated rights to use this line, running through St. Thomas as well. In fact, the Wabash set up its Canadian operation in St. Thomas.

While the Wabash operated passenger trains on these Southern Ontario lines in the early part of the 20th century, the trains were not popular with travelers, and the Wabash was freight-only throughout its Canadian existence, including its absorption into the Norfolk and Western in 1964 and the Norfolk Southern in 1982.

Another U.S. railway to operate trains in Canada was the Michigan-based Pere Marquette Railroad. It purchased several small lines in the Windsor area in 1903 and began to run freight trains from Windsor and Sarnia through Chatham to the Lake Erie coal port of Erieau. Like the others, it made its home for shop and maintenance service at St. Thomas.

Freight trains used a rail bridge to cross between New York State and Ontario. They made their way between Windsor and Detroit via a car ferry over the Detroit River. In 1955, all rail traffic started to use a NYC-owned tunnel under the river.

During the golden age of rail travel, travelers could board a train in Toronto which would take them to either New York City or Chicago or any main centre between, riding on the rails of the Canadian Pacific, the Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo and the NYC. Many trains consisted of cars from all three railroads, and would be pooled together.

This was a time when travel by railroad was most civilized. Several passenger trains which travelled between Canada’s borders were given names by the NYC, conjuring a romantic and pleasurable mode of transit. They included the Interstate Express, the Detroiter, the Ontarian, the New York Special, and the Pacemaker.

Passenger service declined in the 1950s on the Canada Division of the NYC. Trains were dropped from the schedule and gas-electric cars (single self-powered railcars) were employed but usage continued to drop.

The death knell for passenger service came when the major highways were built, especially the Queen Elizabeth Way from Toronto to Buffalo, and Highway 401 from Windsor to Montreal which passed through (or just bypassed) most major centres.

By 1971, the meagre passenger service was discontinued, and while Amtrak (the publicly-funded U.S. passenger rail service) instituted its own service on the Canada Southern in 1974, it was dropped five years later.

While freight traffic continued, most railroads were in financial trouble. The two largest companies in North America, the NYC and its rival the Pennsylvania Railroad, merged in 1968. The spiral continued, and these two former railroads, now known as Penn Central, along with a host of other bankrupt railroads in the Northeast U.S., merged into Conrail in 1976.

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While Conrail continued operations in Canada, including the St. Thomas shops, it began to abandon lines, including the Canada Southern, and in 1985 CN and CP jointly bought the facility, including the Detroit rail tunnel.

Today, nothing remains of the lines. Some stations remain, including the St. Thomas station, which is on the Ontario Heritage Trust foundation