Just an aside concerning the EL&WB rails.
Very, very few of Lacroix's men had ever built or even worked on a railroad before. This lead to a few problems. They purchased rail through the Quebec Central. In due course, in early 1927, five carloads of rail, joint bars, spikes etc. arrived at Lac Frontiere. The gentleman responsible for purchasing the rail noticed that there were three weights from three diffrent mills. Not knowing any better he accepted the order and it was moved by Lombard tractor to Tramway. With the rails loaded on sleds the joint bars ,spikes etc. were piled on the back deck of the tractors to add useful traction. A round trip to Tramway and back by tractor took about 20 hours and burned-up nearly 160 gallons of gasoline per tractor.
Later when rails were changed out (which was very often) it was a nightmare trying to match-up and keep on hand the appropriate joint bars. Rather than follow standard practice (i.e. light rail for sidings etc. and heavy for the mainline) they used alll three weights on the mainline!
The track was laid very hastly and not to a high standard - insufficent ballast, fill's where bridge work should have been, narrow crown. etc. This plus the initial 24 hour schedule led to lots of derailments etc. At one point to combat this Mr. Lessard the supt. shut down the operation for an entire week and placed all available manpower on track and rolling stock maintence.
In 1928 the schedule was altered to a 15 hour day or 5 trains per day minimum rather than the 24 hour schedule.
Your rails do indeed have a bit of history.
Best regards,
Terry Harper