Transportation was a vexing problem for the Petrolia oilmen. The Great Western Railroad had by-passed the town to the north in 1855 but the producers knew that without a railroad to move the oil in large quantities they would be faced with a chronic storage problem at the wellhead. Since the Great Western would not take the risk of running a spur line into Petrolia, the oilmen, led by J. H. Fairbank, raised $50,000 and built their own line. On December 7, 1866, a hundred townspeople rode on the inaugural run to Wyoming. Not long after, the syndicate of oil men sold their line to the Great Western at cost and it proceeded to pay for itself in eight months.
The railroad did not necessarily solve the transportation problem In 1873 oil producers in Petrolia established their own refinery, the Home Oil Works, in an attempt to outwit competitive refineries in London, Woodstock, Hamilton and Toronto which were not above combining to drive down the price of crude oil. Home Oil was the largest refinery of its day. Overnight Petrolia became the refinery capital of Canada with a refining capacity four times that of the domestic market. But at this point the Great Western railroad mysteriously increased its charges for carrying refined oil out of Petrolia. There were suspicions that the London refineries prompted this change in retaliation against Home Oil, and Petrolians clamoured for a second railroad.
Five years later, in 1878, the Michigan Central Railroad ran a line from the south right to Home Oil's doorstep. However, the Michigan Central route from Petrolia to London was a long, circuitous one and, ironically, little oil was ever shipped along it. Eventually the Great Western reduced its rates and stopped discriminating against refined oil shipments from Petrolia.
The train station pictured above was the original one in Petrolia. In 1882 the Grand Trunk Railroad took over the Great Western, including of course the Petrolia spur line. Twenty years later a handsome new station (pictured below) was built.
