The Railway Builders

Published in 1916, The Railway Builders: A Chronicle of Overland Highways by Oscar D. Skelton (1878-1941), the Queen’s University economist who became Canada’s senior foreign-affairs civil servant, is volume 32 of the Chronicles of Canada series from Glasgow, Brook and Company. The book follows Canadian railway history from the first short lines of the 1830s through the Grand Trunk era and the Intercolonial to the building of the Canadian Pacific, completed in 1885, and the rapid prewar expansion of the Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific. Skelton writes with an economist’s eye, weighing land grants, government subsidies, and the financing battles behind each line. For readers of Canadian business and transport history, it is still a useful one-volume account. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.