Montreal had to wait until 1847 for its railway. True, a train service had been introduced on the South Shore between La Prairie and Saint-Jean in 1836, but the first train on the Island itself was the "MontrÄal et Lachine", which came into service on November 19, 1847. As its name suggests, the railway connected Montreal with Lachine and was intended to form part of the route to Upper Canada. As the railway was in direct competition with the Lachine Canal, it was to be only a moderately successful venture. Nonetheless, the experiment was Montreal's first step to becoming the hub of rail traffic; a position which it achieved after 1850. This notice to shareholders appeared in the newspaper La Minerve on 3 January, 1848.
