Dominion Atlantic Railway Digital Preservation Initiative - Wiki
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Sissiboo Pulp and Paper
Located in a few miles upriver from Weymouth, the Sissiboo Pulp and Paper Company ran a short line connecting their pulp mill at Weymouth Falls to the DAR at Weymouth from 1920 to 1928. The company began in 1894 as the Sissiboo Falls Paper Company with a mill located at Sissiboo Falls about 8 miles upriver from Weymouth. The company was purchased in 1899 by Charles Burrill of Weymouth who added a second mill at Weymouth Falls, 3 miles above Weymouth. Both mills were acquired in 1904 by G.D. Campbell of Weymouth and then by the British industrialist Frederick Becker of London, England in 1919. Becker had already purchased the Clyde River Pulp Company in Shelburne County and combined the two companies into the Sissiboo-Clyde Pulp and Paper Company.
Becker surveyed a two and a half mile-long standard-gauge short line from the Weymouth Falls Mill to the DAR mainline just east of Weymouth in 1919. Construction began in November 1920 by the contractor William Cook of Sydney, NS.[1] The company operated several 0-4-0 saddle tank locomotives and in 1921 the company purchased the DAR's old 2-6-0 locomotive, No. 28. A locomotive shed and small yard were located in Weymouth Falls behind the mill dam. The mill had a capacity of 100 tons of ground pulp a day but averaged about 40 tons a day which was packed in bales and sent by rail from the Weymouth Mill to Digby and sometimes Halifax where it was loaded on steamers. Traffic in its first years was heavy with 17-car trains of wood pulp being taken to Annapolis Royal in 1921 where they were made up into double headed trains hauled to Halifax where they were loaded on cargo liners.[2] The company shut down in 1928. Its assets were sold the Mersey Paper Company who used the woodlands, but do not appear to have operated the shortline. The locomotives were cut up for scrap in World War II.[3]
Gallery
Sissiboo Pulp & Paper Co. locomotive No. 1 abandoned in Weymouth, circa 1937.
Sissiboo Pulp & Paper Co. locomotive No. 1 abandoned in Weymouth, with Sissiboo River in the background circa 1937.
Locomotive No. 28, the Dominion Atlantic's only 2-6-0 Mogul.
Weymouth Falls (Sissiboo Falls) with the Sissiboo Pulp and Paper company plant, dam and abandoned short line railway tracks at lower centre, July 29, 1931.
Topographical map of the Weymouth area, including Sissiboo Falls and Plympton and the 1919-1928 branch line to the Sissiboo Pulp and Paper Company, 1950.
References
Ralph S. Johnson, The Forests of Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia Dept. of Lands and Forests (1986), pages 115, 138-139.
External Links
Air View of the Weymouth Falls mill in 1931 after abandonment Note the locomotive shed at middle centre; roadbeds from the shortline and some abandoned rolling stock.
Handbook of the Canadian Pulp and Paper Industry (1920) p. 100
