The Railway Builders: A Chronicle of Overland Highways

This work traces the emergence and expansion of railway networks across Canada, recounting early travel methods, the political and commercial pressures that motivated transcontinental planning, and the engineering and surveying challenges of construction. It outlines successive institutional phases—local beginnings, major mid-century companies, government-supported intercolonial projects, the building of a transcontinental line, later amalgamations, and private expansions—while integrating maps, illustrations, and administrative debates. The narrative highlights motives of national unity and western trade, operational difficulties, financing and competition, and the evolving relationship between public policy and private enterprise, closing with consideration of broader questions confronting continental transportation systems.