connecting Sarnia and Port Huron under the river. However, GTW and CN reinstated the ferry service 80 years later, in 1971, with its Rail-Barge service to accommodate the larger freight railcars that were higher than the 1891 tunnel's height clearance. The St. Clair river barges discontinued service again in 1995, after the new, larger St Clair Tunnel was completed. Detroit River Grand Trunk's river ferry service on the Detroit River connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario was also inherited from its 1882 purchase of the Great Western Railway. Great Western's ferry service began after its rails reached Windsor in 1853. Because Great Western's track gauge of was different from the standard American gauge of , it had to transfer its cargo off railcars and onto the ships. By the 1860s, Great Western made its railway dual gauge by adding a third rail to its tracks to accommodate rail cars of both gauges. Its first side-wheel steam ferry, the Great Western, arrived in 1866, and when first launched was the largest steel vessel on the Great Lakes. The Wabash Railroad contracted with Grand Trunk in 1897 to use its ferry service to connect Wabash's own route from Detroit through Southwest Ontario to Buffalo, New York. Wabash started its own service after 1910, when it acquired Michigan Central's ferries after that railroad opened the Detroit River Tunnel. Eventually, GTW's parent CN took over sole responsibility for ferry operations on the Detroit and St. Clair rivers. The Detroit River ferry operation ceased running in 1975, when GTW was granted trackage rights to use Penn Central's Detroit River Tunnel to connect with CN in Windsor. The start of construction of the Renaissance Center in Detroit in 1973 necessitated the removal of GTW's Detroit ferry-slip docks. During the more than 130 years of rail car ferry operations on the Detroit and St. Clair rivers, all the major railroads, including Michigan Central, Pere Marquette, Wabash and Canadian Pacific, had ferry operations on the Detroit River. The GTW/CN rail car ferry service was the last to operate in the Great Lakes when it ended operations on the St Clair River in 1995. Gallery Notes References External links "Grand Trunk Western." on the February 10, 1948 episode of Western Michigan at Work radio program on WKZO. 14 min., 38 seconds. Grand Trunk Western Historical Society Photo of Grand Trunk Ferry crossing the Detroit River Grand Trunk Railway subsidiaries Canadian