“I went out and had a look at the Chignecto Railway. I was surprised at the vast amount of time, labor and money obviously wasted in the project. All around are lying enormous piles of the finest blocks of stone one would want to see. A railway line connects the place with Tidnish on the other side, the rails of which are of an exceedingly heavy build. Around the place are three or four steam shovels, rusting away as they lie there exposed to all sorts of weather. A trench or canal dock has been dug around 250 yards long and 40 feet deep, in which are two stone walls 40 feet high, making a waterway to the sea, and to complete this enormous programme of waste there is a fine brick building literally filled with valuable machinery of all descriptions, which must surely be rendered useless, as the windows continue to be broken and the building goes to ruin as it is doing now at no slow pace. Such an expense is hardly conceivable in a project that in all probability will never amount to more than a heap of ruins, a monument to some person or persons mismanagement and blundering”. *
Karl’s mode of transport around the world was on a bicycle, and his route utilized the land routes as much as possible. One such route was a narrow, 23km strip of land known as the Isthmus of Chignecto, the only land connection that links Nova Scotia to New Brunswick and then ultimately to the rest of Canada.
The Isthmus of Chignecto served Karl’s adventure well and serves me well every time I travel from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick. However, this same land connection is also what disconnects two bodies of water; the Northumberland Strait to the northeast and the Bay of Fundy to the southwest. This disconnect made sea journeys difficult and complex, requiring ships to sail around Nova Scotia’s mainland, adding an extra 1,000kms to the passage, exposure to risks from storms, and high costs.
For ships to have a way across the Isthmus had great economic value, and Henry George Clopper Ketchum, a New Brunswick-born civil engineer, proposed a ship railway across the Isthmus. After 20 years of planning, in 1888, under Ketchum’s direction, the railroad construction commenced.
The plan was to design a device to lift ships out of the water and then be pulled across the Isthmus to the water on the opposite side. This project involved the labour of 4000 immigrant workers and hundreds of horses. But a short three years later, when the project was 75% completed, the company financing the project went bankrupt and work on the Chegnecto Railway stopped.
Ketchum died in 1896, some say of despair. At the time, some called Ketchum a genius, others a fool. Indeed, Karl’s commentary would reflect the opinion of the time, that the railway’s remains were a “monument to some person or persons mismanagement and blundering”.
Yet, time gives us perspective.
Today, the Chignecto Railway is considered one of Nova Scotia’s most ambitious engineering projects and a great contributor to Canada’s engineering discipline. Although the rail and stonework was removed and only remnants of construction materials from the dock can be found, there remains a crucial piece of that history - the Tidnish Keystone Bridge.
The Keystone Bridge was prefabricated in Scotland and reported that it was so exact in the design that it fit perfectly when the keystone for the arch was put in place. The bridge, designed to divert the river, remains intact today, located along the Henry Ketchum hiking trail that follows the abandoned railway bed. The Tidnish Keystone bridge is a testament to Ketchum’s dream and an acknowledgement to his engineering skills that if the railway was completed, it would undoubtedly still be standing strong today.
*Reference: Truro Daily News Volume 9, number 132 Friday May 26 1899, letter to the paper from Karl after being gone for 2 weeks.
The following video lays out the proposed plans for the Chignecto Railway project.