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New Minas
New Minas, Nova Scotia
Mile 52.9 from Windsor Junction on the Halifax Subdivision (Mile 68.6 from Halifax)
- Next Station East: Port Williams
- Next Station West: Kentville
Facilities & Features
- Oak Island Ballast Pit (1930s) Mile 55
- New Minas Ballast Pit (1960s) Mile 52.2
- End of Track after 1993 Mile 54.8[1]
Commerce & Industry
The first DAR customer in New Minas was the apple warehouses of the New Minas Fruit Company[2]. After WW II, the fruit warehouse was converted to chickens for the Acadia Co-operative Association and joined by the large Hostess Potato Chip Plant and the Maritime Co-operative, later Atlantic Co-op, bulk feed plant.
New Minas was also the location of several ballast pits used by the DAR including, before WW II, the Oak Island Ballast Pit at Mile 55 and in the 1960s, the New Minas Pit at Mile 52.2. The gravel pits in New Minas also provided the last resting place for some old DAR equipment such as yard crane No. 3, scrapped at the Oak Island Ballast Pit and Van No. 91, ex coach 32 scrapped at another New Minas gravel pit.
New Minas became the "end of track" for the DAR in 1993 when the DAR abandoned Kentville and lifted tracks west of New Minas.
Industries Served By Rail
- New Minas Fruit Company/Acadia Co-operative Mile 52.9
- Bulk Feed Plant Mile 52.95
- Gert Schmidt Mile 54.7
- Maritime CO-OP
- Hostess/Frito-Lay
New Minas industries circa 1975.
Looking railway east.
Looking railway east.
Looking railway west from Greenwich CO-OP spur.
West end of Halifax Sub. 1994.
Description & History
Until the 1960s, New Minas was only a small farm community and did not even have a flag stop station. However after WW II, it became home to several large bulk customers who remained some of the last non-gypsum customers on the DAR. New Minas became the western terminus of the DAR in 1993 when all tracks to the west, including Kentville were abandoned. Rail service finally ended to New Minas in 2007 when the DAR's successor, the Windsor and Hantsport railway stopped running trains west of Hantsport.
In the seventies New Minas wasn't much more then a few houses along the highway with Hostess and Maritime Co-op down by the tracks until Darryl Wade decided to build a strip mall there instead of in Kentville, then it boomed. In the 1973 ETT the CP doesn't use the name in the schedule and only uses the name New Minas in the footnotes to mention keeping standing cars clear of the crossing, the insulated joints are marked with yellow paint.[3]
Operations & Orders
Gallery
The westbound Flying Bluenose between New Minas and Kentville.
The eastbound Flying Bluenose at Elderkin Creek nearng New Minas with Kentville in the background.
The Flying Bluenose posed at Elderkin Creek between Kentville and New Minas with the Parlour Buffet Observation Car "Annapolis Royal, circa 1924.
References & Footnotes
- Alexander MacNab, Windsor and Annapolis Railway, Report of Alexander MacNab Nov 1, 1873
- 1969 Memorandum of General Information
