The railway received a major boost in ridership by the decision of the Canadian Copper Company, after the instating of the eight-hour day, to limit the growth of Copper Cliff in favour of a workforce that commuted from Sudbury. It was also around this time that the small constellation of informal industrial villages such as East Smelter, Orford Village, and Shantytown disappeared or were consolidated into the urban centre of Copper Cliff. In Sudbury, the population of certain ethnic groups, such as Finns, began to grow, as immigrant mine and smelter workers could now live in Sudbury and commute to work at the industrial operations around Copper Cliff. At the time, the "Sudbury Star" reported that while in 1915, only about twenty workers commuted from Sudbury to Copper Cliff, a year later that number had risen to more than two hundred. On the far west end of Sudbury, the area around the Copper Cliff Road (later known as Lorne Street), which was also the route of the railway and which had previously been the site of the Gatchell family farm and dairy, was gradually subdivided and became the site of Sudbury's "first real suburban development." Gatchell became a predominantly Italian neighbourhood, one which mirrored Copper Cliff's Little Italy. Similarly, the West End neighbourhood grew extensively around this time along the Copper Cliff Road and Regent Street corridors.