With the arrival of the year 1910, Waterdown was about to go through a major change. With the coming of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, many landforms, businesses, and farms were either going to be demolished, made smaller or just erased from time. Even the inhabitants of the village were to be affected by the arrival of the railway. Before the arrival of this era, John Reid had a dam and pond which were located approximately 50 metres north of the Dundas Street or Highway #5 Bridge. Many people used the pond for recreation, such as boating and fishing. Some people even did their laundry in it. Mr. Reid was a well-known cabinet and furniture maker in Waterdown, with mill buildings along the east bank of the Grindstone Creek. But the coming of the railway changed this. His dam and most of his property were destroyed.

After the pond was drained there was born a new section of the Grindstone Creek. A little further along towards the bridge, the white house on Board Street that had been owned by John and Ada Vance, was taken over by the CPR for use as the Waterdown South station.

The coming of the railroad meant relocating the Grindstone Creek to the west side of the valley. This process took a long time because it was all done by hand. First narrow gauge track was laid for the Dirt Trollies to run on. These trollies carried dirt from loading point to dumping point by a team of horses. When the dirt was relocated to its new spot, the ground which the bed would lay on had to be almost level.¹

The labourers worked summer and winter, and since the bridges were not built until 1911, they needed some way of getting across where the bridges were to be. So they built wooden trestles so that the supply trains and heavy equipment could pass over. The tracks were laid on oak ties and first class gravel which was quarried in the C.P.R.’s own pit in Waterdown. The construction project of the railway line that stretches 19 miles from Hamilton to Guelph Junction took two years to complete at a cost of a million dollars. The construction workers lived in tents which were located in Smokey Hollow, and the surveyor boarded at the old Post Office on Main Street South.²

The new Guelph Junction line officially opened on 1 July 1912. The first train came from Guelph Junction, to the north. It had a crew of four men, Engineer, Mr. McCarthey, Conductor, Mr. Pitt, Brakeman, Mr. Mulhall and Baggageman, Mr. Hughes. The train left Guelph Junction Station at 6:40 a.m., and arrived in Hamilton at 8:00 a.m. The first train leaving Hamilton left at 8:36 a.m. and arrived at Guelph Junction at 9:26 a.m. The run took 50 minutes, including the stops at Waterdown and Flamboro.³ The C.P.R. predicted that the run would not take so long once the line was broken in!

The students from Campbellville and Carlisle, and once the station opened at Flamborough Centre⁴, took the train to Waterdown High School. The local farmers used the line to take their produce to the Hamilton Market every morning. Freight was also carried by the line. Mrs. George Pearson, my grandmother, remembers going down to the Waterdown South Station to pick up a load of lobsters that her mother had sent her from the East Coast. But as more and more people began to purchase cars, the passenger service was no longer needed, and so in 1955, the C.P.R. discontinued the service, and since then, the line has only been used for freight.

There were two railway stations in Waterdown. The South station was at the bottom of Board Street, located, as mentioned, in the former Vance House. The North station was located on the north side of Parkside Drive.⁵ In 1962 all the business was moved to the North station, and the last Station Master, Mr. George McKay moved out. The South station sat empty until 1965, when Gaffney Construction commenced building the new Dundas Street bridge. The company used the upstairs as a storage shed, and the downstairs and an office for their staff. The C.P.R. made a deal with the construction company that when they had finished the bridge, they could destroy the station. When the time came, they decided that the easiest way to get rid of it would be to burn it. Waterdown Reeve, Orley Gunby, and Ted Appleby, the Fire Commissioner would not allow this because the Village had a By-law which prohibited the setting of fires in June, July and August. But on the night of June 23, 1966 someone did the job for them. Over 250 people watched the station’s destruction from the new bridge, and this closed the books on the Waterdown South station.

From nine trains a day to only one a night, bringing 4 – 5 cars to Barcast Company. To-day there are only two stations left out of the five stations down the line, which are Waterdown North and Guelph Junction. The line is slowly deteriorating, the ties are rotting away and the bridges are in serious shape. The bridge close to Smokey Hollow over Mill Street has cement piers that are cracked all the way down and are being held together by steel straps. The railway bed near Smokey Hollow gives cause for worry. In December 1982 there was unseasonably warm temperatures and heavy rainfall. This caused a long crack to develop along the side of the tracks and resulted in a major mud slide down the embankment. The line had to be closed while the reconstruction occurred, but in the process of excavating, the excess dirt was dumped down the slope on the lower half of the valley wall. This extra weight caused slippage on some sections so that in the end the once forested embankment was a tangled mass of trees and fill. Between 1985 and 1987 several other structural problems with the embankment has resulted in considerable concern with regard to the safety of the Waterdown Railway Line.