Chignecto Ship Railway

The Chignecto Ship Railway is a historic Canadian portage railway located in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia.

The project was first proposed in 1875 by notable civil engineer Henry Ketchum as a means to transport ships across the Isthmus of Chignecto, shortening the sailing distance between the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of St. Lawrence by avoiding the necessity of sailing 500 nmi (930 km) around Nova Scotia. A canal had been proposed for the isthmus but financing was proving difficult to secure. Ketchum submitted his proposal to the Government of Canada in 1881. In 1882 the Chignecto Marine Transport Railway Company was incorporated as a federally chartered railway. It was financed by Baring Brothers and Company, London.

In 1685 during an inspection of the now defunct Acadian settlement of Beaubassin, intendant Jacques de Meulles reported that the one league portage could be made into a ditch, since the elevation is low.

The ship railway was designed to carry vessels weighing up to 2000 tons with a proposed transit time of 2.5 hours. Ships would be carried on a cradle forming an extremely wide rail car that straddled parallel twin standard gauge railway tracks, separated by 18 ft (5.5 m) to the centre of each track.

The tracks were built on a route that was almost perfectly straight for a distance of 17 mi (27 km) between the southwestern terminal on the Bay of Fundy, located at Fort Lawrence and the northeastern terminal on the Northumberland Strait, located at Tidnish Cross Roads.

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