August 2024
It’s considered a historic landmark, one that provides a great view of the surrounding terrain around Butternut Creek, a little to the west of Peterborough, Ontario. Built for the Midland Railway of Canada, a historic railway that ran from Port Hope, on Lake Ontario, to Midland, on Georgian Bay, as the “missing link” between Peterborough and Lindsay, Doube’s Trestle Bridge was originally a 1500 foot long, 100 foot high wooden trestle bridge that carried the rail line across the Buttermilk Valley.
Completed on 1 June 1883, Doube’s Trestle Bridge, becoming active in 1884, the trestle was just one of several bridges built to connect the townships of Lindsay and Peterborough, but at the time, it was the largest.
On 1 January 1884, the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) consolidated its hold on the Midland Railway group of companies, initially by leasing them, but by 1893, the companies were all amalgamated into the GTR.
By the 1920s, the GTR was struggling financially and facing bankruptcy. On 20 January 1923, the GTR was fully absorbed into the Canadian National Railway, which had been formed two years earlier. Thus, the former Midland Railway line, including Dube’s trestle, became part of CNR’s inventory. The use of heavier Mikado steam engines necessitated track and trestle improvements. The trestle was filled in from both ends, leaving the 500-foot long centre portion of the trestle, with steel replacing the wood construction.
Initially there were passenger and freight trains using the route, but eventually only freight trains. Until 1955, there were a number of flag stops along the route where milk was picked up from nearby farms.
The last trains rolled along the line crossing Doube’s Trestle in 1978, with the rest of the railway corridor being abandoned in 1988 and the rails lifted.
In 2000, the former rail corridor was leased to Kawartha Rail Trail from the provincial government’s Ontario Realty Corporation for use as a rail trail, eventually becoming part of the Trans Canada Trail.
The tracks and railway ties have been replaced by a flat limestone surface suitable for hikers, bikers, horseback riders and snowmobiles in the winter.
The trestle provides a great of the surrounding countryside. When the area was covered in a thick ice sheet during the last ice age 12, 000 years ago, a large river of meltwater under the kilometre-thick ice sheet cut the valley below the trestle, leaving large drumlins of sand.
Sources: Doube’s Trestle Bridge | Hiking the GTA, This trail near Toronto follows a historic railway bed over a towering trestle bridge (blogto.com), Doube’s Bridge: A Chronology – Kawartha Trans Canada Trail (ktct.ca), Midland Railway of Canada – Wikipedia.
