ATL:Railroad across the Canadian Shield...

In OTL connecting by Rail Toronto and Montreal to Winnipeg and points west was considered to be a National Priority for Canada to connect the country (and fulfill promises made to British Columbia).

With a POD after 1700, let us assume that a single Nation exists which contains at least the OTL United States north of a line connecting OTL San Francisco and Washington DC as well as all OTL Canadian Provinces Ontario and West (it may contain all of North America or anything in between ) at the time when continent wide Railroads can be started.

Without a separate county whose connection must go north of Lakes Superior & Huron, how much after the first transcontinental Railroad does a Railroad crossing north of these lakes get built? Is it reasonable to get to the age of the Atom (OTL 1940) without such a railroad?
 
In OTL connecting by Rail Toronto and Montreal to Winnipeg and points west was considered to be a National Priority for Canada to connect the country (and fulfill promises made to British Columbia).

With a POD after 1700, let us assume that a single Nation exists which contains at least the OTL United States north of a line connecting OTL San Francisco and Washington DC as well as all OTL Canadian Provinces Ontario and West (it may contain all of North America or anything in between ) at the time when continent wide Railroads can be started.

Without a separate county whose connection must go north of Lakes Superior & Huron, how much after the first transcontinental Railroad does a Railroad crossing north of these lakes get built? Is it reasonable to get to the age of the Atom (OTL 1940) without such a railroad?
No. Probably not. There will be railroads on the Shield, but they'll probably run north/south (to mining districts), not all the way across the Shield east/west. That's my guess, anyway.

Building across the Shield is really, REALLY expensive. OTL, as you say, it was a national imperative. By the time you could afford to do it, you may well have gotten into the age of the automobile.
 
In a nutshell...No.

There were more dynamite factories for the CP rail line accross northern ontario than were used for the mountains. Not to mention where you don't need to blast then you run into muskeg so you've got really intensive fills.

It's plausabile to see spurs - Sioux Ste. Marie south, Thunderbay at the lakehead south, eastern mining/logging towns south but without a valid reason to complete the very very very expensive rail it's much better to just go south of the lakes along the farmland/northern shield fringe before shooting west along the prairies. This is what they did to build the transcanada railway...build up to the Algoma highlands from s.Ontario, then buy a railway through the states, connect to Winnipeg and build/ship materials on the purchased railway to the prairies to lay track (and show progress to secure funding) while slowly, slowly, slowly trying to connect the dots between ports and existing raillines.
 
Even just going along the southern shore of Lake Superior through Northern Michigan would have been easier. So as everyone else has said, if it hadn't been for nation building, there'd be no large scale railway. Just small ones to the nearest port.
 
Top