Iron Ore Route Map

There had been American connections to the Cobourg & Peterborough Railway from the earliest days.  It was an American engineer who designed the Rice Lake bridge and an American contractor who built it!  But the bridge had long been out of commission by the time American interests purchased the remaining operating portion of the railway, solely to supply iron ore for the Pittsburgh market.

Transporting the rails, cars and engines from Cobourg to Blairton, for the new rail line there, was a major undertaking. In the end, the cost of transporting the iron ore all the way to Pittsburgh was too much for the business to continue.

A replica of one of the iron ore cars has been produced using parts rescued from the Trent River after being submerged for 99 years. It is on display on Cobourg’s waterfront near where the original was built by the Crossen Car Company.