The Algoma Eastern is one of Northern Ontario's ghost railways. Although almost half of the original 87 miles of track still has rail spiked to gauge, only two small segments, totalling about 15 miles remain in use and the corporate name has not been seen on rolling stock since 1930. The railway was originally chartered in 1888 as the Manitoulin & North Shore Railway and was intended to connect Manitoulin Island with mainland Ontario.  No construction was ever done by the founders of the M&NS.

In 1899 Francis Clerque's Lake Superior Corporation was looking for a source of sulphur for their paper mill in Sault Ste Marie.  Since the nickel ores in the Sudbury Basin, about 400 miles to the east, are generally high sulphur content, it was natural for the corporation to look for a source for their sulphur in the Sudbury area.  The Canadian Copper Company, Inco's predecessor, showed no interest in supplying Lake Superior with sulphur so the Corporation decided to source their own and bought two small nickel mines, the Elsie and Gertrude properties about five and twelve miles respectively west of Sudbury for that purpose.  A smelter was built at Gertrude and operations began.    The nickel produced was considered a by-product.

Transportation of ore from the Elsie mine to the smelter and finished products from the Gertrude smelter required a railroad.  The CPR seemed to be uninterested in providing service, so Clerque purchased the dormant M&NS charter from a syndicate headed by Robert A. Lyon.

The M&NS was re-chartered federally in early 1900.  Like many turn of the century railroad barons, Clerque's plans, as reflected in the M&NS charter, were a mixture of practical planning and pie-in-the-sky dreaming. The charter of the M&NS called for the main line to run southwest from Sudbury, Ontario to Little Current, Ontario on the north shore of Manitoulin Island, the world's largest freshwater island.  From there the line would head southwards to a point on the south shore of the island where ferry service would provide a link to Tobormory on the Bruce Peninsula.  The line would then continue south through to Meaford, Wiarton and Owen Sound.  Like many other railroad schemes of this era, execution was not one of the original planner's strong points; the line never went beyond Little Current.

In May of 1900 construction began on the M&NS from the CPR mainline in downtown Sudbury.  By the end of the next year, fourteen miles of main line had been completed from Sudbury past Clarabelle (Mile 4.8), the site of the Canadian

John Morgan  (1997)
CP.. Nickel Sub. - East of Creighton

Copper Company's (now Inco) smelter and Creighton Mine (Mile 11.3), another CCC property just coming into production to Gertrude Mine.  Traffic began to  flow to and from various sites along the line.

For the most part the construction of this portion of the line was done as frugally as possible.  Expensive rock cuts were avoided wherever possible with the line curving around most obstacles. The ubiquitous northern swamps were crossed on massive corduroy platforms piled with ballast.

In 1901, forty miles to the west of Gertrude, the Spanish River Pulp & Paper Company began construction of a paper mill on the Spanish River at Espanola.  A short 1.5 mile spur south from McKerrow on the CPR Webbwood subdivision (the main line from Sudbury to Sault Ste Marie) was built including a crossing of the Spanish River just north of Espanola on a 176 foot through riveted truss span.  This spur was built by the Sault Corporation, under the M&NS charter and was leased to the CPR until the M&NS should reach Espanola.

1903 was a disastrous year.  Although the early part of the year saw the addition of two new customers, the Haight & Dickson Lumber Company and Mond Nickel's North Star Mine, both at Mile 10, indications of financial problems had been growing more and more evident.  Poor financial management coupled with the rapid expansion of all of the Clerque empire holdings caused the Lake Superior Corporation to literally run out of money.  Gertrude and Elsie mines and the Gertrude smelter closed.  They were never to reopen.  All construction and expansion of the M&NS was halted and the railway settled in to servicing the customers that it had on its fourteen miles of track.

By 1907, the fortunes of the Lake Superior Corporation  were improving.  Clerque had been removed from ownership of the Company and the new owners resolved the financial difficulties.  Construction resumed on the M&NS main line towards Espanola and Little Current.

In 1909 the line had been extended to Crean Hill Mine ( Mile 23), another Canadian Copper Company property. This included crossing the first major obstacle on the line, the Vermilion River at Mile 17.  The Vermilion River bridge consisted of a 105 foot and a 60 foot deck plate girder spans on stone abutments and centre pier.

At Nairn Centre (Mile 36.7), the line, which had been following the Spanish River for the last few miles swung south to pass under the CPR Webbwood subdivision which was carried over the M&NS on a 27 foot inch skewed deck plate girder span on concrete wing abutments.  The railway then swung west again to make the first crossing of the Spanish River on a 180 foot through riveted truss span at mile 42.  The line then continued almost due west about 2 miles  to join up with the existing Espanola spur about a mile south of McKerrow in 1911.

In May of 1911 the name of the railway was changed from the Manitoulin & North Shore to the Algoma Eastern.  Most probably this was some kind of bureaucratic clean up since most of the other subsidiaries of the Lake Superior Corporation

	Keith Hopkin
	A.E.R. Little Current Swing Bridge  (circa. 1913)

were named "Algoma" something or other.

Construction continued south of Espanola through the rugged LaCloche Mountains to Whitefish at the mouth of the Spanish River and from there across the LaCloche peninsula and Great LaCloche  Island to Turner across the North Channel from Little Current.  A wye, yard and maintenance facilities were ;located at Turner.  Finally in October 1913 the 600 foot Little Current Swing Bridge was finished and the track reached Little Current.  The railroad now stood as complete as it was going to get.

Like most businesses in the 1920s, the AER prospered, however the financial collapse and resultant depression of 1929 hit the AER as it did everything else.  Nickel demand dried up, and with it much of the Inco traffic.  The Lake Superior Corporation began looking at dumping some of their properties, and the AER, being remote from most of the empire in Sault Ste Marie was a prime candidate.  The Lake Superior Corporation went looking for a suitor and soon found it in the form of the CPR.  In March of 1930 the CPR leased the AER for 999 years.

Soon after the cutbacks began. In 1931 the section between Espanola and Turbine was abandoned.  By 1935, the line had been cutback to O'Donnell.  In the early 1940s, after Inco closed the O'Donnell open air roasting yards the line west of Gertrude was abandoned.  Further cut backs to Creighton took place in the 1950s.

By the 1970s the remnants of the AER, known as the Nickel and Little Current Subdivisions of the CPR were two thriving branch lines.  Ore travelled from Creighton to Clarabelle.  A forty car unit bunker C train made the trip from Montreal to Clarabelle once a week, the final portion of the run being on the Nickel Subdivision.  Quartzite, mined at Lawson Quarry on the Little Current Subdivision wound up at Clarabelle on the Nickel Subdivision.  Iron Ore pellets from Copper Cliff travelled to Turner via the Webbwood and Little Current Subs where a multi-million dollar facility loaded the pellets into Lake Freighters for further shipment.  The paper mill at Espanola was shipping paper and receiving logs, chips and chemicals. There was also lots of general merchandise in the form of fuel and lubricants for the oil company agents at Espanola and Little Current, cement from the Lafarge's cement facility at MacGregor Bay and even boxcars of suds bound for the beer stores at Espanola and Little Current.

By the late 1990s however the situation has changed.  Although there is still traffic on the Nickel Subdivision, the Little Current Sub, now renamed the Little Current Spur has lost all traffic south of Espanola and is under consideration for abandonment.  The end-of-track is now a couple of miles north of Turner due to road realignments and the end of rail service across the bridge to Little Current.  Lawson Quarry is abandoned and all of the former AER/CP customers south of Espanola, including the Lafarge cement facility ship by truck.