Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

284 ENGINEERING WONDERS OF THE WORLD. THE C.P.R. SIDINGS AT WINNIPEG. (Photo, C.P.R. Company.) The largest in the world; 120 miles of track. closes navigation for the season on those inland waters, the railroad is overtaxed in the attempt to cope with the east-bound trade till spring opens the lake ports again. In 1880 Canada meant some quietly prosperous eastern provinces, an isolated, sparse- ly settled western province, and a vast undeveloped hin- terland. The now solid east and the progressive west de- rive their prosperity mainly from the great railway enter- prise which has turned the men and horsemen, while the mining wealth of “ B.C.” was but dimly appreciated. Win- nipeg, the present populous What city of the Middle West, was the C.P.R. but jn i^g childhood, waiting done for ^or Pra^es to Peopled Canada. and for the coming of the yearly tide of wheat to build its solid business streets and its present pros- prairies into wheat-fields, and substituted busy farmers and their live stock for the Indian and the bison. ' w-n* We have glanced at the reasons that com- pelled construction to be undertaken when but few men thought the time ripe or the en- terprise justified. We have studied in some detail the actual building of the “ Trans- continental ”—the arduous journeys and ad- perity. Now these same val- leys are filled with farms and orchards ; the great neigh- bouring plateaus—tapped by branches from the parent line —are dotted with busy centres of activity. Their fertility and the wealth of the moun- tains and of Northern Ontario are attested by the long fleets of grain and ore steamers that follow each other swiftly across the lakes and through the ri ver ways and canals to the ocean ports on the Atlan- tic. By Sault Ste. Marie, then an Indian village, now passes each year a tonnage of ship- ping thrice that which threads the Suez Canal. When ice GRAIN ELEVATORS AT FORT WILLIAM. (Photo, C.P.R. Company.) They have each an average capacity of 1,500,000 bushels.