Welland Canal an average of about eleven hours to traverse the entire length of the Welland Canal. Before the digging of the Welland Canal, shipping traffic between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie used a portage road between Chippawa, Ontario, and Queenston, Ontario, both of which are located on the Niagara River—above and below Niagara Falls, respectively. The Welland Canal Company was incorporated by the Province of Upper Canada, in 1824, after a petition by nine "freeholders of the District of Niagara". One of the petitioners was William Hamilton Merritt, who was in part looking to provide a regular flow of water for
Welland Canal, Bridge 15 Railway Canal Subdivision through Welland and the new Wainfleet Marshalling Yard at Wainfleet, Ontario. In the late 1980s, service on this line between Welland and Wainfleet ended and the track was removed between Wainfleet and a point a couple of hundred meters west of Bridge 15. The bridge remains in use today exclusively to serve Vesuvius Industries in Welland. It is owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), but is not connected to any other CPR tracks. It is used only sporadically by Trillium Railway, and chain link fence gates have been installed at both ends of the bridge to