The first railway in British North America, the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad, was built when to track gauge, However the promoters of St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad, (intended to connect Montreal to the ice-free port at Portland, Maine) decided to use , setting a precedent for the colony for several decades, The St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad (reporting mark SLR) , known as St-Laurent et Atlantique Quebec (reporting mark SLQ) in Canada, is a short line railway operating between Portland, Maine, on the Atlantic Ocean and Montreal, Quebec, on the St. Lawrence River?
Track gauge in Canada The first railway in British North America, the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad, was built in the mid-1830s to track gauge. This was followed by the Albion Colliery tramway in and the Montreal and Lachine Railroad in . However the promoters of St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad, (intended to connect Montreal to the ice-free port at Portland, Maine) decided to use , setting a precedent for the colony for several decades. The first section from Longueuil to St. Hyacinthe opened in 1847 and at the end of that year there were 30 mi of broad gauge and 22 mi of standard gauge in Canada.
Delaware and Hudson Gravity Railroad A predecessor to the Class I Delaware and Hudson Railway, the 1820s-built Delaware and Hudson Canal Company Gravity Railroad "('D&H Gravity Railroad')" was a historic gravity railroad incorporated and chartered in 1826 with land grant rights in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania as a humble subsidiary of the Delaware and Hudson Canal and it proved to contain the first trackage of the "later organized Delaware and Hudson Railroad" (so eventually became a first class Class I Railroad). It began as the second long U.S. gravity railroad built initially to haul coal to canal boats, was the second railway chartered in the United States after the Mohawk and Hudson Rail Road before even, the Baltimore and Ohio (e. 1827). As a long gravity railway, only the Summit Hill and Mauch Chunk Railroad (e. 1827) pre-dated its beginning of operations.