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Mabou and Gulf Railway

By John R. Cameron

Another industrial railroad was the Mabou and Gulf, intended to serve coal mines in and around Mabou, Inverness County and, in part, to overcome the monopoly of the Inverness and Richmond, which had its own coal mines at Inverness. The original charter (1902, c.134) authorized a railway to connect the Mabou coal mines with the Inverness and Richmond and with Mabou Harbour. Another line would connect with the Intercolonial near Orangedale and a third would connect the Intercolonial with a shipping pier at Caribou Cove or Inhabitants Bay, Richmond County, for access to the Atlantic Ocean.

The next year, Inverness County council rescinded their grant of $6,000 in lieu of a right of way for the Mabou Coal Mining Company and instead granted a free right of way to the Mabou and Gulf for the whole railway in Inverness County (1903, c.96). The right of way was to be generally 100 feet wide, with up to five acres for a station, ten acres at junctions or terminals and ten acres for a shipping point at Mabou Harbour. A separate resolution, confirmed by the same statute, provided an additional subsidy of $1,000 per mile for the line to Orangedale. These resolutions were revalidated by 1903, c.98. The County was authorized to borrow $30,000 to pay for the land required and taken by the Mabou and Gulf for the railway tracks, stations and appurtenances (1903-04, c.96). In 1905 (c.98), the county received authority to apply $8,000 of the money borrowed under 1900, c.81 ($60,000 for the Inverness and Richmond) towards the cost of the Mabou and Gulf land between Mabou coal mines and the junction with the Inverness Railway at Glendyer.

The Mabou Coal and Railway Company was incorporated in 1908 (c.135) with power, among others, to acquire the Mabou and Gulf. It altered its incorporators and extended time in 1910 (c.153).

[SOURCE: A Legislative History of Nova Scotia Railways, by John R. Cameron, 1999.]

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