Schomberg and Aurora Railway

Schomberg and Aurora Railway

Aurora Station at Oak Ridges
Locale	Schomberg, Aurora
Dates of operation	1902–1927
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)
Length	22.5 km (14.0 mi)
Headquarters	Toronto

The Schomberg and Aurora Railway (S&AR, also nicknamed the "Annie Roonie") was a 36 km long railway in Ontario, Canada, running from the town of Schomberg to Oak Ridges, just south of Aurora. It connected Schomberg to the Metropolitan Line of the Toronto and York Radial Railway (T&YRR) tram service running along Yonge Street, and from there into the Toronto city proper. The service ran for 25 years between 1902 and 1927; the rails were pulled up shortly thereafter.

In 1902, the Schomberg and Aurora Railway was acquired by the Metropolitan Street Railway which in turn was acquired by the Toronto and York Radial Railway in 1904.

The S&AR started at the request of a Schomberg businessman who wanted to open the local produce markets to day-trippers from Toronto. The T&YRR had greatly increased visitors to similar markets in Newmarket and they were hoping to do the same for Schomberg. The company was chartered in 1896, and construction started out from the Bond Lake area south of Aurora in July 1899.

The line was completed and opened for traffic in August 1902, an oddity that used steam trains to connect to the much smaller electrified trams, a connection made at Aurora. There were four stations in total, Aurora on the west side of Yonge Street north of Bond Crescent, Eversley Station on Dufferin Street, Kettleby Station at the corner of Kettleby Road and Weston Road, and Schomberg Station in the middle of Main Street in Schomberg. (The S&A "Aurora" station was actually in Oak Ridges, a community within today's Town of Richmond Hill to the south of Aurora.) The S&A connected with the T&YRR's Metropolitan line at Aurora. There were also numerous street-side whistle stops along the route, numbers 158 through 171. Because the railway operated on a small budget, it purchased extant buildings for its stations instead of constructing new ones.