three-inch wide planks, 12 or 13 feet long. The road was laid along the current route of Burnham Street to Gore's Landing, under the direction of William Weller, the "Stage Coach King", and Thomas Gore as supervisor. The road proved almost unusable in spring and fall when wet weather made it unable to carry a load. Maintenance suffered, and by 1850 the road was almost unusable. Luckily for Cobourg business interests, the Port Hope efforts had failed, and competition to the plank road had never materialized. Cobourg and Peterborough Railway Soon after the road was rendered useless, a new group led by D'Arcy Boulton Jr. (G.S.'s and Peter Robinson's nephew) restarted efforts to build the railway. This time the plan was to push across Rice Lake and end in Peterborough, at that time a quickly growing industrial town. In the fall of 1850, Andrew Jeffrey was appointed to head a new committee to study the railway. Other members of the group included Boulton, the mayor Ebeneezer Perry, H. Ruttan and T. Dumble. In late 1851 Boulton claimed that a line would be operational in three years. A new charter for the Cobourg & Peterborough Railway was granted on 10 December 1852, and the town purchased £25,000 of the stock. The engineering was initially offered Samuel Keefer who estimated the cost at £125,000, but could not take the job. It was then offered to Ira Spaulding, who recommended increasing the estimate to £151,000 in light of the costs of the bridge across Rice Lake. A construction contract was offered and picked up by Zimmerman & Balch, Samuel Zimmerman's firm, who signed the contract on 15 January 1853, and threw in £1,000 for good will. Sod was turned by the new mayor's wife on 7 February 1853, at the corner of what is today the northeast corner of Spring Street and University Avenue (then Railway and Seminary). Work on the bridge started on March 3. Financial problems arose in 1854 with the advent of the Crimean War which created a labour shortage and wages rose to one dollar per twelve-hour day. James Crossen was contracted to build rolling stock, the start of a company that would long outlast the railway itself. The line reached Harwood in May 1854, and citizens were offered a free ride on the line. Work on the bridge continued through the year. The bridge was the second largest