York–Durham Heritage Railway

The Township of Uxbridge owns Uxbridge's heritage railway station but leases the tracks and Uxbridge's railyard from the province through Metrolinx, a provincial agency. The York–Durham Heritage Railway was an incorporated registered charity. The township was the railway's landlord.^[2]

The York–Durham Heritage Railway operated non-stop from the Uxbridge Station on the Metrolinx Uxbridge Subdivision.

Trains were usually scheduled on weekends from June through mid-October, and were pulled by an Alco RS-11 diesel locomotive, #3612, which was built for the Duluth, Winnipeg & Pacific Railway in 1956. Coaches included both vintage heavyweights built in the 1910s and 1920s, and lightweight cars from 1954.

The railway cars were stored at an open rail yard on Railway Street/King Street West in Uxbridge, Ontario. Several railway sheds are on the yard. The most significant is the Uxbridge Station, built in 1904.^[3]

Initially, YDHR staff consisted entirely of volunteers. In later years, as ridership increased, paid staff increasingly supplemented the volunteers. At the same time, the YDHR board of directors had a decreasing number of members from the local community.^[2] As of 2022, the YDHR was operated by nine full-time staff supplemented by 88 part-time and seasonal workers and volunteers of the York–Durham Heritage Railway Association.^[4]

By 2023, the township identified code and safety problems in YDHR's operations that the township wanted rectified. On January 21, 2024, the YDHR announced that all operations had ceased and the railway had filed for bankruptcy protection. The YDHR's chairperson admitted its business model had not been successful.^[2]

Later in 2024, the township started to prepare an RFP for a rail operator to restart a heritage train service. However, Metrolinx, as owner of the rail line, convinced the township to abandon the idea due to potential new obligations related to oversight, insurance, and liability as well as the prospect of new fleet acceptance requirements.^[5]

As of April 1st, 2026, all of the remaining YDHR rolling stock has been removed from the property.

The Uxbridge Subdivision was built in 1871 as the Toronto and Nipissing Railway, a 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) narrow-gauge line. The line was converted to 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge shortly after being acquired by the Midland Railway in 1882. Following a series of mergers and acquisitions, the line became part of the Canadian National Railway (CN) in 1923.

In the 1980s, CN began to abandon the line. Tracks north of Uxbridge were lifted, but the line south of Uxbridge was purchased by GO Transit (now Metrolinx) to preserve it for possible Uxbridge - Toronto commuter rail service. Pending the introduction of such a service, the York-Durham Railway was the sole operator north of Old Elm station.

• List of heritage railways in Canada
• Narrow gauge railways in Ontario
• List of Ontario railways
• Rail transport in Ontario