Huntsville & Lake of Bays - Merrilees Collection

I thought I had run out of NG Merrilees Collection photos, but just remembered I have some from the Huntsville & Lake of Bays Rly in Ontario. Two buddies wrote a book The Portage Railway in 2018, and we went to Ottawa to get photos from the collection. Not all were used in the book, and some of you may not have seen it anyway, so here's a few.

The railway was/is in the North Muskoka Lakes region, about 2 or 3 hours drive north of Toronto. Two otherwise navigable lakes (Peninsula Lake and Lake of Bays) were separated by a small height of land. A canal to connect them was proposed at one time, but in 1904 the narrow gauge railway was built instead. This was the transition time between lumbering and the start of tourism, so the railway hauled large amounts of timber and tanbark at first. This business waned, but was replaced by growing numbers of tourists and supplies destined for the area's new resort hotels.

The H&LOB billed itself as the world's shortest common carrier. Even though only 1 1/8 miles in length, it sported fairly steep grades and even a switchback. The original locos were twin 7 ton Porters, both cute as a button, and originally built for the EB Eddy forest mills in Ottawa. They had the unusual gauge of 3' 81/2" - so exactly a foot less than standard gauge.

The first shot is #1 (Porter Serial #911), then #2 (Porter Serial #912). Due to the heavy traffic in peak tourist season, they were usually double headed, as per photo 3. The locos were never turned.








The first passenger equipment was four Toronto horse-drawn streetcars, spliced together to make two passenger coaches. Note in this photo, that the Porters originally came with diamond stacks.




These first coaches were soon replaced by two retired streetcars. This is the "Large" open coach - originally a 15 bench streetcar built by Jackson & Sharp for Atlantic City in 1901. It came to the H&LOB in 1922.



To be continued.....