Begun in 1884, the Toronto, Hamilton, and Buffalo Railway (TH&B) was intended to link Toronto and Hamilton to Fort Erie but failed to get off the ground due to funding problems. The Brantford, Waterloo, and Lake Erie Railway (BW&LER) had been formed to connect Brantford with Waterford, a point on the Canada Southern Railway (CSR), and from there to Lake Erie. When the BW&LER went bust in 1891, the TH&B jumped in to take it over in the hopes that the combined funding would help them both. The plan was to build a line from Hamilton to Brantford, which would thus connect Hamilton to Lake Erie through Waterford. Two years later, the TH&B stock was bought by a combination of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and other railways owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt, including the CSR. The new owners then built the Hamilton to Brantford link and began a new link from Hamilton to Welland, where it would link up with the CSR to go to Fort Erie. By 1916, the TH&B added a link through Smithville and Dunnville to Port Maitland. In 1977, TH&B was sold to CPR.