Just over a century ago, work commenced on the Chignecto Marine Transport Railway across the Isthmus of Chignecto. The ship railway involved the use of a hydraulic lift to raise large ships on a wheeled cradle. The cradle and the ship were to be towed across the Isthmus by two locomotives and then hydraulically lowered into the receiving waters. The project would transfer ships quicker and be less expensive than building a canal. A private company built the ship railway with the promise of an operating subsidy from the federal government. Financial problems brought the work to a standstill in August 1891. Despite what appeared to be a temporary setback, international economic and national political events prevented completion of the project. Today, the remains of the railbed, an arch culvert, and the foundations of the pump house are all that are left of this 19th century engineering innovation.The contemporary technical literature detailed many of the engineering feats at Chignecto. In 1891, Henry Ketchum, the New Brunswick engineer responsible for the concept and design, presented two concurrent papers on the ship railway to the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers. This paper documents the development of Chignecto Marine Transport Railway. Key words: history, civil engineering, Canadian, shipping, canals, marine railway, and politics.