by Jean Turnbull Elford writing in Canada West’s Last Frontier
(1982) Nothing could look better to the pioneers of Lambton than a railway when what roads they had were almost impassable and water transportation was halted by ice for months on end. In 1836 with commendable optimism the settlers of Sarnia elected Captain Richard Vidal to go to Toronto at their expense to petition the government for a railroad.
Twenty years later their hopes were about to be realized when the Great Western started to expand their line from Komoka to Sarnia. Like other Lambton railroads it was built as part of the Canadian route between Buffalo and Port Huron, a route designed to shorten the trip between the eastern and western states.
Construction began in Lambton on both the western and eastern ends. The eastern portion got supplies by rail and the western by ship. In September 1857, the Sarnia paper reported that the Free Trader had arrived with railway iron and that an engine would soon be brought.
Swamps were the biggest obstacle in laying tracks across Lambton where the land is level and has relatively few streams. In two years the track was down, a depot built, a grain elevator almost completed, and break-bulk ferries ready to carry freight across the St. Clair River. On December 27, 1858, a train with a wood-burning engine steamed into the depot at the foot of Cromwell Street inaugurating the London – Sarnia service that has operated ever since.
While the railway was under construction, oil was discovered at Oil Springs. To serve the field a station was opened at Wyoming. Eight years later the Great Western took over a line from Wyoming to Petrolia, built to serve the Petrolia oil industry. It operated for passengers until 1931 and gave regular freight service until 1943 when trains were limited to one or two a week.
As well as local oil, the Great Western carried local salt. Horse-drawn cars on a wooden tramway brought salt from the Elarton Salt Works in Warwick to Kingscourt Junction from shortly after 1870, when the salt mine began to produce, until about 1915.
Eleven months almost to the day after the Great Western ran its first train into Sarnia, the Grand Trunk ran its first train into Point Edward. The pleasure of seeing such a benefit to the county was dimmed somewhat by accounts of the shady real estate deals perpetrated by prominent men in acquiring the land at Point Edward that had been set aside for military purposes.
Once the land was bought, track laying progressed rapidly with suppliers coming by rail at the eastern end and by ship at the western. By November 1859, the largest station west of Toronto had been erected on the waterfront, docks built, a car ferry readied to take the cars across the St. Clair River, and a ferry fitted out to transport the passengers: they never crossed in the coaches. From across the river a line extended to Detroit.
The first train came in from Detroit and left for Toronto by way of St. Marys. Passengers for Toronto paid $5.00 each way and had a seven-hour journey. On their trip they first passed International Park, a piece of land set aside for holding livestock that was being shipped and now part of Canatara Park. They then proceeded down Cathcart Boulevard and on to Blackwell and through the other new communities the railway created at Perche, Camlachie, Aberarder, Forest and Thedford.
The large white brick station at Point Edward with its dining facilities, overnight accommodations, first and second class waiting rooms had a number of notable guests, the most notable being Edward Albert, Prince of Wales, who was entertained there in September, 1860.
Many less well-known people passed through the station that replaced it after a fire in 1871. Among them were numerous bands of immigrants who boarded the train at Halifax or Montreal on their way to Western Canada. At Point Edward they left the train, washed themselves and their clothes in the river, and went by ship to American ports at the head of the Lakes to go on by railway to their new homes.