T. H. B. Rwy Spur Line - 1896

“Great is steam; and great also the steam shovel; particularly the one in use on the spur line construction. But for that steam shovel and a few other things, among them dynamite and detonators, work on the cuts and fills along the line would be terribly slow. The mighty steam shovel takes the place of a big bunch of navies, and the dynamite gets a move on that is unapproachable by a battalion of them.”

                        “With the Railroad Makers : What Was Seen in a Trip Along the Spur Line”

                        Hamilton Spectator. September 4, 1896.

        During the late summer of 1896, the Canadian Pacific Railway began construction of a project to connect the Grand Trunk Railway with the Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railway by means of a spur line through an area south of Dundurn street to just beyond the Desjardins canal.

        The scene of the construction activity was never known as a particularly romantic or picturesque locality despite the hills and hollows beside the Dundas Marsh (Coote’s Paradise)

        As described by a Spectator reporter who visited the vicinity of the project, “Pigott and Ingles, with their horde of diggers and delvers, have seized that section of the face of nature, and have given, and are giving, it a vicious slap and distorting it until its best friends do not know it.”

        At the city of Hamilton’s western limits at Dundurn street, traffic along King street west had been diverted for those wishing to proceed to Dundas.

Where the King street right of way had formerly been located, the Spectator man noted that a huge trench dug out: “in it are men and boys digging, scraping, drilling, pounding, driving teams, handling big derricks, operating the steam shovel and steam hoisters, and in half a hundred ways toiling to complete the cutting and filling. Upon this hive of human bees gaze little crowds of citizens, who have leisure time to thus study the science of railroad construction and, incidentally, dodge the big rocks that sail through the air with the greatest of ease and drop where most convenient.”

Despite injunctions and other minor problems, the contractors had been on course to finish the work by the October 1896 target for completion.

However, a serious delay was caused by the problem of filling in the marshy area immediately south of the Hamilton cemetery property: “there is a rapacity about the marsh that is almost unappeasable. Every dump car which runs that way drops a few square yards of solid, appetizing earth into its maw; but it cries for more. There is a sinking sensation somewhere about it that is almost beyond cure; but the men keep on dumping in the earth, and bye and bye, they hope to fix that marsh so that it will cease its settling and be at rest.”

The 1896 project to connect the T. H. B. railway line thorough Hamilton, completed at the end of the previous year, to the Grand Trunk line beside Burlington bay involved some serious engineering challenges.

To achieve an even base for the track route chosen needed substantial leveling by the method of cutting down the high portions of the route and filling in the lower parts.

The longest part of the route which needed filling was the area between the marsh and the cemetery. Over 1,500 feet in length, the construction crews had a major challenge which the Spectator man described as follows: “at first when the cars used to unload into the marsh, it kept settling about four or five feet a day, but now it isn’t quite so restive and soon it will be crossed and conquered.”

The spur line was nearly two miles in length, and the contractors employed between 400 and 500 men on it, besides nearly 100 teams of horses.

As well as the large number of men and horses, the company used one steam shovel, six steam hoisters, ten derricks, fifty wheelers, twenty-five drag scrapers, and twenty wagons on the project.

The Spectator reporter was most impressed with one particularly large machine used by the contractors: “the most interesting piece of machinery is the steam shovel. It is set up on a movable platform, with an extension on which is placed the crane. A long beam or arm, with a lot of chains and rods, constitutes the cranial portion. Hanging from the end of the beam is a big iron bucket or shovel, with three savage-looking tusks at the top and an iron jaw at the lower end. The bucket is lowered against the bank, and when the big iron fangs get a grip on the earth, the shovel is filled and swung over a dump car. A jerk on the rope operated by the cranesman and the jaw of the monster drops and out comes the earth into the car. The steam shovel requires three men to operate it – the engineer, fireman and cranesman – besides four men on the outside to move the big affair as the cutting proceeds. The shovel is moved only about four or five feet at a time every two hours, and, as it stands near the blasting, it gets many a crack on its iron covering.”

There was a tremendous amount of blasting required on the project. While the route was marshy in places, in other places, particularly near the Dundurn street end, there was solid rock which had to be removed.

Residents in the city’s west end could hear and feel the blasts everyday from first light until dusk: “when everything is in position for firing the blast, the operator of the battery shouts ‘Fire!’ This is a signal for everybody to scoot and seek a safe place. Then the battery man touches the button, there is a sharp, resounding crack, or a dull thud, a shower of rock fills the air and sprinkles the surrounding landscape and the blast is a success.”