by Jean Turnbull Elford writing in Upper Canada’s last Frontier
(1982) Lambton had three railway lines when the question of bonusing the Erie and Huron arose. This line was to extend north from Erieau on Lake Erie to Sarnia. As well as giving local service, it was to be a link for freight moving to and from Port Huron and Buffalo. Car ferries were to take the trains across the St. Clair River between Sarnia and Port Huron.
The Lambton portion of the line ran into many financing difficulties, but by September 1866, the road was ballasted and the line through Sombra, Moore and Sarnia Townships, and a car ferry dock built at Sarnia. On September third the first train reached Sarnia, and on the sixth, the town gave the railway an official welcome. On September 10, 1986, the following appeared in the Sarnia Observer:
“The Erie and Huron Railway was formally opened for traffic on Monday last, and the shriek of the whistles is now regularly heard along the St. Clair…At present there are but two trains a day each way….The express leaving Sarnia at 6 a.m. connecting at Courtright with the morning train for St. Thomas and at Fargo with express trains on the MCR and the the mixed at 4 p.m. Trains arrive at 12:30 p.m. and at 7:30 p.m.”
Stations within the county were at Port Lambton, Sombra, Courtright, Mooretown, and Corunna, with two flag stops, one on the Sarnia Reservation na-med Wawanosh, and one in Sombra named Watson.
The passenger service, though it ruined the north- south ferry business, was of great benefit to the river- front villages. These had been somewhat isolated when ice filled the river and during spring and fall when mud made the river road impassable. The trains carried the mail, freight and cordwood, and made it possible for people to go into Sarnia all year round.
Coaches had straw-covered seats in summer and red plush ones in winter, hanging oil lamps and coal stoves. At a flag station, a person could flag the train when it was about a quarter of a mile away, a toot from the whistle signified that the signal had been observed and that the train would stop. The passengers could expect to have quite a wait, for the train known as the G.O.P., meaning get out and push, was noted for neither speed nor punctuality.
Until 1908, trains came into a depot at the west end of Cromwell Street in Sarnia. Then, streetcar service being available, the railway used a depot at the end of Clifford Street on the waterfront. The one that replaced it in 1923 is still there. Streetcar service to this depot was taken over by buses in 1931. Two years later, the railway discontinued its passenger service and the carrying of mail.
By then the railway had operated under three different companies. Hiram Walker bought the line from Erie and Huron in 1898 and renamed it the Lake Erie and Detroit River Railroad. He started the cross-river car ferry service. In 1902, Pere Marquette took over the line and in 1924 built a spur line into the Dominion Alloy Steel Company plant that is now [Editor’s Note: in 1982] used by Dow Chemical.
Local freight up to this time had been produce, cordwood and gravel, but as the years went by, more and more raw material and machinery were handled. With the building of Polymer and Dow Chemical, freight business became much more active.
After 1947, when the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway took over the line, service was expanded so that by the 1970s, ten local industries were using it to bring in supplies and to take out products.
The railway, under its different operators, has quite lived up to the expectation that the editor of the Sarnia paper expressed in 1886 when he wrote”
“This road is destined to become of considerable importance to Sarnia and will render a good return to the town for the bonus given to it.”