Goderich–Exeter Railway
Feeder railway between Goderich and Stratford, Centralia, Ontario Canada
The Goderich–Exeter Railway (reporting mark GEXR) is a short line freight railway that operates 77 miles (124 km) of track in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Created in 1992, it was the third short line railway in Canada (after Central Western Railway in Alberta (1986) and Southern Rails Cooperative in Saskatchewan (1989)) to be purchased from a class I railway, in this case Canadian National Railway (CN). It took over operation of further CN trackage in 1998. As of 2004, the railway had 44 employees. Its headquarters are in Stratford, Ontario, and owned by short-line railroad holding company Genesee & Wyoming.
History
The Goderich–Exeter Railway was created in 1992 by its owner, RailTex (subsequently purchased by RailAmerica in 2000, and Genesee & Wyoming in late 2012), to operate over Canadian National Railway's Goderich Subdivision, 46 miles (74 km) of track between Stratford and Goderich, Ontario; and its Exeter Subdivision, 24 miles (39 km) of track between Centralia, Ontario and Clinton Jct. that was acquired from CN. The railway started operation on 3 April 1992. On 15 November 1998, the Goderich–Exeter Railway took over operation of CN's Guelph Subdivision, which runs over 89 miles (143 km) between Silver Junction (in Georgetown) and London, Ontario.
The railway had expressed an interest in acquiring the former CN branchline from Stratford to Owen Sound, but was unable to do so as a result of changes to Ontario labour law which made the acquisition uneconomic.
After a 21-year lease to GEXR, CN took over GEXR's yards and the Guelph Subdivision on 15 November 2018.
The public source identifies “Goderich–Exeter Railway” as feeder railway between Goderich and Stratford, Centralia, Ontario Canada. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Goderich, Exeter and Railway.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5576334. The Library of Congress control number is no2017044453. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992, 1986, 1989 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Goderich–Exeter Railway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.