Somewhere near Tweed ON, photo by Greg Gormick by Lesley Bernard - As a Tweedite, I have been following this plan closely. Like with many of the other communities on the proposed route, representatives from VIA have been here too to meet with our mayor and council. The Chamber of Commerce asked council to support the plan. The mayor and council's official position is "wait and see if anything actually happens". The Eastern Ontario Trails Alliance had been under the mistaken belief that they owned the ROW but CP has always retained ownership. A fibre-optic trunk line was buried under the ROW about 15 years ago. Locals and tourists could be opposed but ownership having been retained by CP, the tracks can go back down whenever they want. In town, the ROW is intact but with some encroachment by some of the adjacent neighbours with fences and plantings. The ROW runs right thru the local lumber yard but they are in the process of getting permits to build a new facil...

Welcome to Tweed! VIA Rail Canada proposes to run frequent slow trains through here. Many comments and emails have been received about our articles relating to VIA Rail Canada and their Ontario-Quebec Railway plan to run a lot of slow trains along this route. Sometimes a photo can say all that needs to be said. Thanks to Greg Gormick for sending this photo in. Good luck VIA Rail with your plan.

VIA RAIL - CPR Abandoned Rail  Line Through Tweed Ontario Our last blog on the VIA RAIL plan to use the old Ontario/Quebec CPR long abandoned rail line was a popular read. Long time supporters of VIA RAIL hope bringing this rail line to life will save VIA RAIL. Sometimes though the truth is in the details. There was a reason CPR downgraded the line to secondary status over a 100 years ago as their mainline for the quicker lakeshore route. Let us look at the beautiful community of Tweed Ontario where VIA RAIL hopes to have  their frequent slow passenger trains travel through. Here is a LINK to large version of the map. Seems there maybe some challenges for VIA. Here are some of the obvious ones: Six level crossings, private property to buy and in the upper right hand corner a new rail bridge to build! Thankfully VIA RAIL has never promised high speed trains, so I would think the train speeds through Tweed would be about 5mph.