By 1910 the City of Hamilton had the second highest number of electric interurban or radial railways of any city in Canada. Radial lines connected Hamilton to Brantford, Oakville, Dundas, and Beamsville, with plans for additional lines allowing for connections to Niagara, Guelph, Galt, and Toronto. In their lifetime, these lines carried thousands of people to work, to school, and shopping, as well as tons of freight.
The Hamilton & Dundas Street Railway (H&D)
The Hamilton, Grimsby, & Beamsville Electric Railway (HG&B)
The Hamilton Radial Electric Railway (HRER)
The Brantford & Hamilton Electric Railway (B&H)
The Hamilton Terminal Company (HTC)
Radials planned but never built
Of the four Radial railways that branched out from Hamilton in the early part of the twentieth century, the HG&B and the HRER were built mostly on or parallel to roadways, and repaving & road widening over the last seventy years have destroyed much of the original routes. However, there are some remains of each, if you know where to look.
By comparison, the H&D and the B&H have had large portions of their routes preserved, and are in use today as hiking & biking trails
