One hundred miles north of the Company transcontinental rail line through Mattawa, Ontario, lies the town of Angliers, Quebec, close to the Ontario-Quebec border at the headwaters of the Ottawa River.

Angliers and its sister towns to the south, Ville Marie, Kipawa, and Timiskaming to name but a few, have but one rail link with cities to the southward, a curvaceous single track line which only a few short years ago had to get up and move several hundred yards eastwards and upwards to make way for a gigantic hydro development which affected 40 miles of its 116.9 mile length.
 

Over this line each day (Sundays excepted) the railway operates a very shiny and somewhat unusual self propelled rail diesel car call the "Dayliner" which is fitted for the carrying of passengers and express and mail, all three of which it handles in large quantities. While Dayliners operate in other sections of Canada, this is the only one which is not devoted exclusively to pasenger traffic.

The trip north is worth making. Scenery is both plentiful and spectacular, and when Mother Nature decides to put on some rain, fog, and lightning, the effect is sometimes more than spectacular.

Departure is made from North Bay, Ontario, at 06:50 with a goodly load of express, some of it by transfer from Owen Sound. The 45 miles eastward to Mattawa over the main line is made in an hour and five minutes. At Mattawa mail and further express put aboard and the start northward is made.

Outside Mattawa the Ottawa River is crossed and the line begins to climb above the shore line. At La Cave, Quebec, the old line below, marked now by tha signs of the abandoned right-of-way, enters the river backed up by the huge Ontario Hydro dam there.

For the next four and a half hours, the trip is on Rock cuts and fills, high bridges, and deep gorges are the order of the day. But at the same time the personalities of the towns served make themselves felt. Names like Snake Creek, where hunters sometimes flag down a ride further north, or Beauchesne, where a particularly high bridge catches the eye, begin to mean more than just a station stop. These are places where a hardy people live in a hardy land as different from the big cities of Canada as black is from white. Timiskaming with its huge pulp mill, Kipawa a mile off line where the rails ran up the main street to the station which is built level with stores and houses on the street, Ville Marie, another town served by a seven-mile cut-off from the main line where the track stops just short of entering the front yard of a house, and finally Angliers, once rumoured to be the jumping-off spot for a railway to Hudson Bay.
 

The yarns and stories of these places make it apparent that the railway is not just a bundle of tracks and ties. It is a big part of the daily life of the people. Arrivals are an event which never lose their appeal. The pride of the passengers and townsfolk in their trains is manifested in a hundred ways, the youngsters who get aboard in enginemen's cap and bandanas ready to help train crews "keep on time", the church official who cautioned his parishioners crossing the Ottawa River outside Mattawa on the trip north, not to prop their feet on the upholstery, or the residents of Angliers who turned out in force one wintry day to unstick the frozen wheels of a train so that it could make its way southward on time.

This is branch line railroading, but the punctuality, efficiency, and pride is strictly main line.