Barbara A. Martindale- For What It's Worth
He captured the CRHA (Canadian Railway Historical Association since 1932) book award in 2002 with his masterpiece, Hamilton's Other Railway.
Author Charles Cooper's 419-page hardcover coffee table book is still being sold online from the Bytown Railway Society and at the Caledonia Grand Trunk Station as a stunning, historic record of the most scenic railway line in Southern Ontario.
Hamilton's Other Railway is about the line that ran through Caledonia from Hamilton (Lake Ontario) to Port Dover (Lake Erie). It also ran from Hamilton to Barrie (Lake Simcoe) and from Beeton to Collingwood (Georgian Bay).
Known as the Hamilton and North Western Railway, it was later taken over by Grand Trunk and then CN after 1923.
Charles Cooper says his primary aim in writing the book was to record as much as possible about the railway itself. That he did.
Today, Charles Cooper’s Railway Pages website, always kept up-to-date, is very informative for the railway "buff." He has included Haldimand and Norfolk and a picture of Caledonia's former station.
The forerunner to this book was Cooper's very popular book, Rails to the Lakes, on the shelves about 35 years ago, which was out of print very quickly after publication. Using the only copy on hand from the Caledonia library, Rails to the Lakes was used extensively by the Grand Trunk Station Society when they were looking for information about the Caledonia station during renovations in 1997.
As far as Caledonia history is concerned, this is the rail line referred to as the Hamilton to Port Dover or the Hamilton to Lake Erie. It was almost 20 years in the making by the time it opened from Hamilton to Jarvis in 1873. Another line, the original BB&G, had been going through Caledonia east to west since about 1852.
Caledonia was set back in progress when town fathers subscribed $10,000 in the 1850s to building the Hamilton to Lake Erie railway north to south. Walpole subscribed a greater amount and Hamilton city council set aside an even greater amount. There were nine directors elected June 11, 1855, one of whom was Caledonia's James Little.
The rivalries and politics are very much a part of Hamilton's Other Railway.
"It was nothing short of remarkable, at that belated time, that the Hamilton & North Western got built at all, and managed to remain independent for as long as it did. Even in its relatively brief span of independent existence, the H&NW was very important for Hamilton in that it afforded a four-way portage between Lakes Erie, Ontario, Simcoe and Georgian Bay, as well as stimulating traffic for Hamilton through its intersecting railways," Charles Cooper says in his introduction.
In 1888, Grand Trunk took over the Hamilton & North Western, "claiming another addition to its growing array of pioneer line possessions.”
The little we know about today's railway goings-on in the world of CPR and CNR, Charles Cooper puts it in perspective when he states: "It is, however, an irony that as this process of abandonment, merger and acquisition continues, 'short line' railways emerge that in many respects look and act very much like their predecessor pioneer lines a century or so ago.”
The short line going through Caledonia today is an example.
