National Transcontinental Railway
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| Locale | New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba |
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| Dates of operation | 1913–1918 |
| Track gauge | 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge |
The National Transcontinental Railway (NTR) was a historic railway between Winnipeg and Moncton in Canada. Much of the line is now operated by the Canadian National Railway.
The completion of construction of Canada's first transcontinental railway, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) on November 7, 1885, preceded a tremendous economic expansion and immigration boom in western Canada during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But the monopolistic policies of the CPR, coupled with its southerly routing (new scientific discoveries were pushing the northern boundary of cereal crops), led to increasing western discontent with the railway and federal transportation policies.
The federal government had encouraged the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) system in the 1870s to consider building the transcontinental rail line. During the same time, a government survey party under the direction of Sandford Fleming set out across Canada to survey routes for the proposed railway. The "Canadian Pacific Survey", as it was called, surveyed routes to a number of Pacific Coast destinations (including Victoria on Vancouver Island). When Grand Trunk balked at building a railway using the survey, the government turned to the privately owned Canadian Pacific. CPR, one of whose directors was James J. Hill, from Minnesota, favoured a route further south, as Hill hoped to tap into freight flows from the northern U.S. states. This left Canada with a single transcontinental route close to the U.S. border, since CPR chose to use Rogers and Kicking Horse passes rather than the surveyed route over the Yellowhead.
By the early 1900s, the GTR was willing to consider building a second transcontinental system for the country – provided it received government assistance, similar to the CPR's deal. However, while the government and GTR were considering whether to proceed and negotiating terms, the Canadian Northern Railway was already building a second transcontinental rail line.
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