Historic McAdam, N.B., train station marking 125 years

A New Brunswick train station’s past juncture as a key travel hub is marking 125 years.

The McAdam Railway Station officially opened in 1901, a few kilometers from the New Brunswick-Maine border crossing.

For decades it served as a connection point for Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) lines running north, south, east, and west.

A string of 125th anniversary celebrations will be held at the train station, which is now a museum and events space, in the weeks and months to come, starting with an event on May 5 commemorating the completion of a geothermal heating and cooling installation.

“It’s a major upgrade to our energy efficiency,” says Luke Saunders, manager of operations at the McAdam Railway Station. “As part of that project, we installed a solar panel system up on the flat roof.”

Saunders says the goal was to install the new energy system without taking away from the station’s Chateau granite architecture – a preserved trademark of most grand CPR buildings of the time.

“It was actually part of our mandate to have it not impact any of the character defining characteristics of the building,” says Saunders. “It couldn’t really be visible from ground level.”

The installation is expected to reduce energy costs by 50 per cent, reduce the train station’s carbon output, while also allowing for expansion of year-round public access, and future development of the building’s second and third floors.

“The restoration work that’s been done here over the years is tremendous, all with this sort of long-term goal of restoring this building to be an economic driver in the McAdam region,” says Saunders.

The total cost of the renovation is about $1.5 million. By comparison, it cost Canadian Pacific Railway $30,000 to begin construction of the train station in 1900. The station’s size doubled 10 years later, reflecting the growing number of travellers passing through daily from Montreal, Toronto, Boston, and New York.

The train station’s expansion included more hotel rooms, a dining room, a lunch counter, a post office, a customs office, an express room, and baggage space.

The building, with its pitched roof and dormer window, is now noted as a rare surviving railway station/hotel combination.

“We’ve always had a plan to restore the hotel, and we are now using the dining room a great deal of the time,” says Frank Carroll, a member of the McAdam Historical Restoration Commission. “To keep those services going and to expand those services is our plan.”

Carroll says momentum at the station is matching a welcomed increase in freight traffic passing by the station.

“We are right in the middle of rail traffic,” says Carroll. “We act cooperatively with NB Southern, and they are extremely obliging and supportive in the projects we do here. They keep the trains moving for us, we don’t become blocked in.”

More 125th anniversary events this summer will be announced in the lead up to summer, on the McAdam Railway Station Facebook page.

The Saint John Society of Model Railroaders has scheduled an exhibit at the station to mark the anniversary, between June 20 - 21.

Anybody who has any personal stories connected to the train station has been asked to contact the McAdam Railway Station.

“We’re not only going to be looking at what a treasure the building is,” says Carroll. “We’ll also be looking at the characters who make it a national historic site.”

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