Walking Through Canada's First Railway Tunnel

Welcome to the third and final of three videos from Jon's Canadian trip this summer. The third video from Ontario, Canada comes from the city of Brockville in the Thousand Islands area and a look at the Brockville Tunnel.
It is the first railway tunnel built in Canada; construction began in September 1854 and the first train passed through the tunnel on December 31, 1860. Since 2017 it has been opened to the public as a free seasonal tourist attraction.
The tunnel runs in a north/south direction from Water Street, for a distance of 527 m (1,730 ft). It passes underneath what is now Brockville City Hall, built in 1863-64 as the Victoria Hall. It was built by the Brockville and Ottawa Railway. The tunnel was designed to provide a rail link from the timber trade of the Ottawa Valley to the Brockville port facilities on the St. Lawrence River ship route.
The rail line through the tunnel was later used by special height-shortened steam engines, and then diesel trains into the mid-1970s. The rails and ties were then sold and removed in the 1980s, and the railway tunnel was no longer used as it was built. In 1982, the tunnel was turned over to the City of Brockville by Marathon Realty, the real-estate wing of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Adjacent to the tunnel is a refurbished CPR caboose or van, that was donated in 1987 to the city by the Canadian Pacific Railway. Jon shows us around inside the caboose including the observation area.
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