The Cumberland Railway and Coal Company is a defunct Canadian industrial company with interests in coal mines in Springhill, Nova Scotia, and a railway that operated from Springhill Junction to Parrsboro. Springhill and Parrsboro Coal and Railway Company The General Mining Association (GMA) had been established in 1825 to develop mineral rights in Nova Scotia held by the Duke of York. The lease was abrogated in 1857 after the colonial government of Nova Scotia had released all mineral rights in the colony in 1849. In compensation for this loss of mineral rights, the GMA was permitted to retain certain assets in specific geographic areas. Among those rights was a 4 square mile (10 km²) property on a hill in central Cumberland County. The lack of transportation prevented mining development at Springhill until 1870 when the construction of the Intercolonial Railway between Truro and Moncton came through the area. This instigated several corporate moves for acquiring mineral rights in the Springhill Coal Field. Since the Intercolonial Railway's preferred route was the most direct east-west line possible, the Spring Hill and Parrsborough Coal and Railway Company (Limited) was incorporated in 1872 as a mining and railway company to link from a mine at Springhill south to the port of Parrsboro on the Bay of Fundy from which coal could be shipped to destinations in southern Nova Scotia and along the eastern seaboard of North America. The same investors also created the Pugwash and Spring Hill Railway Company, which received a charter to build a line north to the Northumberland Strait port of Pugwash from which coal could be shipped to northern Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, eastern New Brunswick and Quebec. Both railway lines were promised a subsidy that year by the provincial government for their construction. However, the investors were able to reduce the amount of new railway construction required in Cumberland County after they encouraged local politicians to persuade the Intercolonial Railway surveyors to route that railway's main line further south from the direct route between Oxford Junction and Amherst. Thus the line made a diversion of several miles to what came to be named Springhill Junction where the Spring Hill and Parrsoborough Railway would link to the new government-owned railway. The prospect of the railway connection with the Intercolonial saw the Spring Hill & Parrsborough Coal & Railway Company (Limited) lease several areas of Crown mineral rights outside the