in its turn,
insisted on the same gauge for the Grand Trunk line, to ensure that all
east-bound traffic should be brought through Canada to Montreal. It
carried its point, and the wider or 'provincial' gauge became the
standard in the Canadas, and later in the Maritime Provinces.

Experience proved that it was impossible to maintain different gauges
in countries so closely connected as Canada and the United States. As
roads became consolidated into larger systems, the inconvenience of
transhipping at break of gauge became more intolerable. The expedients
of lifting cars bodily to other trucks, of making axles adjustable, and
even of laying a third rail, proved unsatisfactory. Late in the
sixties and early in the seventies the Great Western and the Grand
Trunk had to adopt the four-foot-eight-and-a-half-inch gauge solely,
and other lines gradually followed.

Meanwhile, the cry was going up for a still {98} narrower gauge. In
pioneer districts, at least, it was contended, a road three feet six
inches wide, such as had recently been adopted in Norway, would
suffice, and would be much cheaper both to build and to operate.
Between 1868 and 1873 two experimental narrow-gauge lines were built
running north from Toronto--the Toronto and Nipissing, and the Toronto,
Grey and Bruce. This proved only a temporary diversion, however, and
the decision of the Dominion government in 1874 to change the gauge of
the Intercolonial to four feet eight and a half inches, and the
adoption of the same standard by the Ontario government, ended the
controversy.

Memory is short and hope eternal. Soon after Confederation another
burst of activity began in all the provinces of the new Dominion. It
was distinctly the period of local development.

In Ontario the opportunity which the fertile western peninsula, jutting
down between New York and Michigan, offered for both local and through
traffic, led to many projects, much parliamentary jockeying, and at
last construction. The Canada Southern was built in 1873, running
between Fort Erie, opposite {99} Buffalo, and Amherstburg on the
Detroit river. It was controlled by the Vanderbilt interests and
operated in close co-operation with their other roads, the Michigan
Southern, Michigan Central, and New York Central. The Great Western
met this attack upon its preserves by building in the same year the
Canada Air Line, from Glencoe near St Thomas, to Fort Erie, giving more
direct connect