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The Le Cœur, Terrance and Lynville Railway was formed in 1878 by the merger of the Chemin de Fer Québec et Trois Rivieres (Québec to Montréal, Montréal to Sherbrooke), the Le Cœur and Terrance Railroad (Québec to Lynville), and the Bangor and Québec Railway (Lynville to Bangor, ME).

The LT&L was always just too big to be driven out of business by rate wars, but too small to be considered a good investment by expansionist railway barons. The era of wildly overbuilding railways passed it by without overextension (plans were made and a route was platted for a route from Ottawa to Toronto but those were shelved during the Panic of 1893, and the overextension and nationalization of the Canadian Northern froze out any interest in building yet another transcontinental.)

By the 1920s, the LT&L had settled into a comfortable & profitable state; a loop of track around the Central Lowland giving two routes between Montréal and Québec, making connections to the Maine Central & Bangor & Aroostook (in Bangor, ME, on the Bangor & Québec), the CNR & CPR at many locations, the NYC southwest of Montréal, the PV&T at the US border (at the southern end of the TdM), the Delaware & Hudson also at the US border, but on the other side of Lake Champlain, and the Central Vermont at Lacolle, PQ.

The LT&L was friendly with all of these railroads, but it was friendliest at all with the PV&T; the two railroads had combined their terminal trackage around Montréal into a common subsidiary – the (as it was called then) Montreal Terminal RR in the 1880s, and did a wide exchange of trackage rights around the turn of the 1900s.

These two railroads gradually entangled themselves in the 20th century; pooling locomotives (at least until the PV&T’s electrification was in full swing), running joint passenger trains, purchasing each other’s stock, and eventually merging into one system in 1961.

Post-merger, the LT&L & TdM initially operated as PV&T subsidiaries, but in the late 1980s (after the D&H acquisition) first the LT&L, then the TdM and D&H, were moved to being direct subsidiaries of the trust that controls the PV&T.

The LT&L is enough of a dominant component of the Parsons Vale system so the corporate HQ has been moved from Boston to Montréal, leaving only a small branch office at the original trust HQ.

LT&L history

1860

Chemin de Fer Québec et Trois Rivieres founded.

1864

CdFQ&TR extended to connection with the Montreal & Southern Railway.

1866

Le Cœur and Terrance Railroad founded.

1867

LC&T builds from Québec to Thetford Mines.

1869

CdFQ&TR builds from Montréal to Ottowa.

1871

LC&T purchases M&S.

1872

LC&T extended to Lynville, at the Maine border.

1874

Bangor and Québec Railroad founded (owned by the LC&T.)

1875

B&Q connects to LC&T

1876

CdFQ&TR builds Montréal to Sherbrooke.

1877

LC&T builds Terrance to Thetford Mines.

1878

CdFQ&TR, LC&T, B&Q merge, become the Le Cœur, Terrance and Lynville Railway.

1880

Parsons Vale and Montreal Railroad merges with M&S to form the Chemin de fer terminal de Montréal.

1884

B&Q Augusta branch (Bangor to Augusta) built.

1899

Sherbrooke to Thetford Mines built.

1904

Purchased the Mount Orford Railway.

1921

Purchased the Central Vermont’s Farham to Granby to Magog line as the CV was trying to avoid the bankruptcy that put it into the CNR’s control (spoiler: the CV lost this bet in 1923)

1930

Purchased 10% PV&T stock.

1940

First diesel locomotives – ALCO S-2’s 100-109 – purchased.

1961

Merged with PV&T.

1962

Augusta branch electrified at 3000VDC.

1963

B&Q from Bangor to Lynville abandoned.

1967

The PV&T Trust moves their corporate HQ from Boston to Montréal.

1993

Purchased the Canadian Atlantic Railway, abandoning about a third of its New Brunswick trackage and selling the remains of the Dominion Atlantic Railway to Iron Road Railways.

2007

Assumed control (with the D&H) of the Ontario Southwestern Railway.

2012

Started the China Tunnel Railway Company project.

2018

Exchanged trackage rights with the Canadian Pacific Railway; the CPR was granted trackage rights from St-Jean-Sur-Richelieu to St John, NB (on the CAR route the LT&L purchased from the CPR not more than 24 years earlier) and the LT&L from Montréal to Woodstock, ON.

2019

VIA moves 2 of their Québec to Montréal Corridor trains from CN rails to the LT&L’s (mainly electrified) Victoria Air Line and starts operating them with ILW dual-power locomotives.

2020-2025

The Canadian Pacific electrifies – assisted by the Parsons Vale – their Rocky Mountains trackage from Vancouver to Calgary (~1000 km) and starts doing runthrough trains with the LT&L and Delaware & Hudson.

2025-?

CPKC merges into the PV&T Trust, and the CPR arranges to transfer all trackage east of Toronto to the LT&L.