Dominion Pacific Railway

The Dominion Pacific Railway (DPR) (reporting marks DP, DPAA, PEG, BCP), also known as simply Dominion Pacific or DomPac, is a historic Alban Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Dominion Pacific Railway Limited. Headquartered in Kiottowa, Kootenay, it owns more than 25,000 kilometres of track across all Alban provinces. It also owns tracks in the United States, where it operates as Winnipeg Lines throughout the Great Lakes Region, and in New France, where it operates as Bouclier Pacifique.

Dominion Pacific is the oldest railway system in Albion and was first constructed to connect west-coast Albion to the Port of Churchill, Muskegon and link the country to the United Kingdom via the Atlantic. While primarily a freight railway, Dominion Pacific was for decades the only means of expedient passenger travel between spread-out regions of Albion. The railway was vital to the settling of Eastern Albion and the Great Plains, becoming one of the most powerful companies in Albion in the process.

Dominion Pacific is one of less than a dozen current Class I railroads in North America.

Predecessor projects
In the years leading up to Albion's achieving Dominion status, the Columbia Colonies struggled to expediently move goods and people to and from the United Kingdom due to the need to travel across the Pacific to reliably reach Alban ports. Work to build connections to Hudson Bay was under way as early as 1864, when then-Governor George Neel Abercrombie's administration broke ground on a railway from Granville east towards the Rocky Mountains in the hopes of bridging through the various passes and connecting Albion to the Hudson-rim port of York Factory. Extensive surveying of the mountains was ordered to identify the best route.

By 1872, land surveys had identified possible rail routes through one of three passes - Crowsnest, Howse and Yellowhead - and construction on a preliminary rail system, the Columbian Pacific, had connected Granville to gold-mining regions in the Kootenays by way of Osoyoos. But funding for the system was hard to come by through the Columbia Colony budget alone.

Dominion status and self-government gave Albion greater flexibility to complete the railroad project. The election of 1878 saw John Severus Townshend campaign on a promise to complete a railroad linking the new Dominion to the Atlantic. Townshend made good on his election promise largely through patronage.

Construction of the railroad
In 1878, Townshend and other high-ranking politicians received bribes in the form of donations from key landholders and executives in the Dominion Pacific Railway Company to award them the contract to complete the trans-mountain and prairie links of the railway. Conservative Party influencers preferred Dominion Pacific rather than the competing Inter-Oceanic Railway Company, which Townshend believed to be linked to American railway giants. The approach stood counter to the Liberal position of the time, which would have seen the railway largely constructed as a public enterprise.

The influence of Dominion Pacific executives and Conservative donors strongly influenced the route of the railway. The most consequential of these choices was the Townshend government's 1878 selection of Crowsnest Pass as the trans-mountain leg of the railway, routing the rail corridor through lands owned by a major Conservative donor, Colonel Alphonsus Baker. Baker would benefit immensely from the railroad, selling the land to the government for an immense sum; this land now underlies Bakersfield. The Crowsnest Pass route further set the stage for the development of Kiottowa, then known as Fort Hamilton, and laid the groundwork for Kootenay to emerge as a distinct province.

A key undertaking was the construction of the High Level Bridge through Kiottowa, over the Oldman River; at 1,624 metres long, it is the largest railway structure in Albion and the largest trestle of its type in the world. Its construction was a source of pride for Dominion Pacific, with the bridge becoming a major landmark in Kiottowa as the city grew.

The government proceeded with work on the railway in several legs, identifying Semammitt, Fraser as the western terminus of the railway. The existing sections of the Columbian Pacific Railway were transferred to Dominion Pacific in 1881. The government also agreed to defray surveying costs and exempt the railway from property taxes for 20 years.

By 1881, construction was well under way, with particular attention given in the early going to crossing the forbidding Canadian Shield in the east and through Crowsnest Pass in the west. Delays through 1882 saw the railway bring in outside executives with renown in railway construction. The oversight of one Adam Marcellus Damen saw the troublesome Minishic to Churchill leg of the railway completed and brought online by July 1883, creating the first linkup to the new port on Hudson Bay. Government investment had already seen to the installation of grain silos and piers at the mouth of the Churchill, establishing the new port there. The Townshend government had made the call to move the port there rather than York Factory or the Nelson River due to more favourable harbour conditions, better suited to movement of cargo than either of the other options.

In 1884, the Government transferred another $25 million in loans to the DPR to complete the funding of the railway. With most of the line complete by the beginning of 1885, the line saw its first official use: DPR trains transported Alban troops over the Rockies in a matter of days to put down the Eastern Rebellion among the Metis and First Nations.

The last spike was driven into the railway on March 3, 1885, in a ceremony outside Swift Current. This marked the completion of the primarily Hudson-Pacific Route, connecting Semammitt to Churchill overland.

In the ensuing years, Dominion Pacific expanded its services with the addition of branch-off lines, most notably the Red River Line from Swift Current on towards Fort Garry, Minitic. This line would later serve as the basis for the Trans American Express, linking Puget Sound to the American Midwest and New France on through to Mirliguéche. The company would also buy out the Great Sound Railway and incorporate service between Granville and Multnomah through Windsor.

Dominion Pacific and Eastern settlement
Much of Dominion Pacific's eastern routes passed through thinly-populated Great Plains in Palliser's Triangle. The company viewed the settling of the Great Plains, supported by the government's Homestead Act, as vital to maximizing profit from the system. The Railway made a policy of strongly promoting immigration to Eastern Albion, particularly promoting the Homestead Act in European countries. As part of the concessions involved in the construction of the railway, Dominion Pacific had received 25 million acres of land, which it advertised through agents operating in European cities, promoting the benefits of relocating to Albion.

Immigrants were offered land grants at remarkably low prices, as low as $2.50 per acre at contemporary rates, provided they could cultivate it. Those who accepted the offer were awarded passage to Albion on Dominion Pacific-owned ships and ferried via Dominion Pacific-owned "colony cars" to Dominion Pacific-provided land along the railway route. At its peak, Dominion Pacific operated nearly 1,000 colony cars, low-cost sleeper cars designed to carry immigrants from the Port of Churchill inland to settlement sites.

Key cities built along Dominion Pacific Railway routes include Paskoyac, Minishic and Swift Current, Kisatchewan; Tampere, Athabasca; Winterbridge, Kiottowa and Bakersfield, Kootenay; and Osoyoos, Fraser.