Central Ontario Railway

Central Ontario Railway

A crowd gathers on the Central Ontario Railway platform in Bancroft to await the arrival of the first train on 2 November 1900.
Reporting mark	COR
Locale	Ontario, Canada
Dates of operation	1879–1984
Predecessor	Prince Edward County Railway
Successor	Canadian Northern Railway/ CN
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Length	50.9 miles (81.9 km)

The Central Ontario Railway (COR) was a former railway that ran north from Trenton, Ontario to service a number of towns, mines and sawmills. The railway originally formed as the Prince Edward County Railway in 1879, running between Picton and Trenton, where it connected with the Grand Trunk Railway that ran between Montreal and Toronto. After being purchased by a group of investors and receiving a new charter to build northward, the railway renamed as the COR in 1882 and the company started building towards the gold fields at Eldorado and newly discovered iron fields in Coe Hill.

On reaching Coe Hill in 1884, the mine was found to have low grade ore, nearly bankrupting the company. Expansion continued to other mining areas around Bancroft, along with two wholly owned subsidiary lines, the Ontario, Belmont and Northern Railway, later known as the Marmora Railway, and the Bessemer and Barry’s Bay Railway. The later was supposed to connect to the Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway (OA&PS) at Barry's Bay, but these plans were shelved. A new route to the OA&PS was selected to Whitney, just outside Algonquin Provincial Park. Construction on this final portion reached Maynooth in 1907 but was never completed, and the line ultimately ended in the now abandoned town of Wallace, about 25 kilometres south of Whitney.

The COR was taken over by Mackenzie and Mann in 1910, along with the Irondale, Bancroft and Ottawa Railway which connected to the COR north of Bancroft. Both lines were then purchased and merged into their Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) in 1911. After CNoR was nationalized 1918, the lines became part of the Canadian National Railways (CN) system in 1923. CN operated the COR as the Maynooth Subdivision. Sections of the line north of Maynooth were lifted in 1965, and the entire rest of the line in 1985. All of the side branches had been abandoned much earlier, typically when the ore deposits dried up.