editors collection

An interesting pic showing the United church in the background while
passenger cars wait for passengers at the MC station on Center street ca.1905.Notice
that the writing on the passenger car was added on the glass negative afterwards.  It was evidently taken on Albany St. from the end of Walnut St. facing NORTH .

Grand Trunk Railway Depot

During the oil boom, the need for a railway in Petrolia was desperate.  Ox-carts transporting oil barrels was a common sight on Main Street.  But the railways were not convinced that the oil supply would warrant the cost of laying track to Pertolia.  The town could wait no longer and financed a spur line from Wyoming.  The line was so successful that the Great Western Railway bought and operated it until amalgamation with the Grand Trunk Railway in 1882.
The trains backed down the track five miles, coming to an abrupt end at the back door of the station.

Canada's oil capital certainly deserved a more dignified station, than a two story frame building.  In 1903, this study in Victorian grandeur was erected, from red pressed brick and stone.  At each end of the impressive building are circular turrets capped with bellcast roofs and graceful supporting brackets.  Above the front entrance, with its fan transom stands a square tower.

A circular theme has been carried out in the interior of paneled Georgian pine, with restored Ladies and Gentlemen's waiting rooms at each end.  The glass in these rooms is unusually thick and curved to follow the walls.  The center portion housed the general waiting room, ticket office, operators desk and a baggage room at one end.  The building served as a railway station until 1937, when the Canadian National Railway agreed to lease the vacant station for A Public Library to the town of Petrolia.