Past Railway Empires

By pastrlyempires

'The Canadian' at Jasper Station in the Canadian R

Jasper was created as a railway siding in 1911 by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. It was originally called Fitzhugh after a GTPR director, part of the Grand Trunk Pacific's 'alphabet line', but was renamed in 1913 when the townsite was surveyed, and the original fur-trappers' name of Jasper was readopted. 
By 1913 both the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTPR) and the Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) had stations at Jasper, with their extraordinary parallel trans-continental lines.   These were amalgamated into a single line in 1917 when both companies unsurprisingly ran into financial difficulties.  The Canadian Army took up the surplus track and used it in France to support the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the Great War.
 By 1923 the CNoR and the GTPR had been taken oven by the Canadian government and merged into the Canadian National Railway (CNR), which continued to use the old GTPR station until it burned down during the winter of 1924-25.
The current station was constructed by the CNR in 1926, in British arts and crafts style.  
The station was declared a heritage railway station by the federal government in 1992, and brilliantly preserves many of the aspects of a 1920's station.

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