Summary
Burketon Station was built in 1884 by the Ontario & Quebec Railway in a rural area on the east side of Old Scugog Road north of Concession 10. The Ontario & Quebec existed solely on paper as a proxy of the Canadian Pacific Railway, to whom it was leased for 999 years. The station utilized the standard “Van Horne” design, which was named after William Cornelius Van Horne and was commonly built in rural areas across the Canadian Pacific system. They were rectangular wooden structures with a second floor at one end containing the station agent’s living quarters. Below that was the waiting room and station agent’s office, with a long freight room extending outwards to one side. The first train arrived at Burketon on June 28th, 1884, though regular service beyond Peterborough to Montreal did not become available until August 4th of the same year. A grain elevator was built soon afterward to facilitate the shipment of local farm products by rail. A small community called Burketon Station began to develop along Old Scugog Road and adjacent to the railway after it was opened.
To tap into the communities and resources north of the O&Q line, the Lindsay, Bobcaygeon & Pontypool Railway was chartered in 1890 by individuals associated with Canadian Pacific. It was originally planned to have this line split off from the O&Q in Pontypool but the terrain made this unfeasible. The starting point was shifted 14 kilometres west to Burketon instead, and the LB&P split off from the O&Q a short distance east of the station. A 70-foot turntable and a two-stall engine house were built nearby, and the station was appropriately renamed Burketon Junction shortly thereafter. The first train left Burketon for Lindsay on July 28th, 1904. To reduce rail traffic congestion on the O&Q line and access the larger communities closer to Lake Ontario, Canadian Pacific built a nearly 200-mile diversion located about 20 kilometres south of Burketon in 1914. Both lines originally had enough traffic to sustain them and by 1919 service to Burketon had increased to six trains per day.
Service to Burketon reached its peak at ten trains per day in 1931, after which the depression and the steadily increasing ownership of automobiles began to take their toll. The Lindsay, Bobgaygeon & Pontypool was never very profitable and the onset of the Great Depression would be its death knell. The line was abandoned north of Burketon to Lindsay in 1932, operating only for a total of 18 years. Ontario Highway 7 was opened in 1920, running parallel with the O&Q along almost its entire route east of Peterborough. Highway 7A did the same west of Peterborough once it was built north of Burketon in 1933. Service crept back up as passenger ridership increased during and immediately following World War Two, from eight trains per day in 1940 to nine in 1947 and ten in 1961. However, the resumption of automobile production after the war would contribute to a massive drop in passenger ridership over the following two decades. By the mid-1960’s, virtually all conventional passenger trains on the O&Q line were replaced with Budd Rail Diesel Cars which were far more economical to operate. Their cheaper running costs kept service to Burketon steady for a time, but by 1968 service had been reduced to only five trains per day. Each of these trains would only stop if flagged down, which was done as a cost cutting measure to prevent unnecessary stops. In 1968, the original 1884 station building was torn down and a small unmanned shelter was built in its place for the remaining service. All passenger service to Burketon was assumed by VIA Rail on October 28th, 1978, and continued uninterrupted until budget cuts forced it to cease operating between 1981 and 1985 when service resumed. Another round of budget cuts in 1990 forced service to cease permanently. The O&Q line remains in use as far east as Havelock but only sees freight service. The unincorporated village of Burketon Station has continued to retain the second half of its name despite its lack of passenger rail facilities.
An early postcard of Burketon Junction Station as seen looking east from the Old Scugog Road crossing in the 1910’s. Courtesy of the Doug Birchill collection. 
Burketon station in the 1960’s, now no longer a junction and missing the order boards it would have had no more than a decade prior. Courtesy of the Al Paterson Collection. 
A rare photo of Burketon Station next to the new, unmanned passenger shelter that would soon replace it in 1968. Courtesy of the James A. Brown Collection.
Condensed Station Info:
| Location: | Served By: | Current State: | Date Built: | Date Demolished: |
| Old Scugog Road | Canadian Pacific (1884 – 1968) | Demolished | 1884 | 1968 |