The Irondale, Bancroft & Ottawa From the opening of the line to Irondale in 1886, progress on extending the line was extremely slow. The line was pushed forward as funds permitted. Up until this time, except for the Bank of Commerce mortgage on the original 6.75 miles of Myles Branch Tramway, and the Cooper Fairman lien on the 5 miles of new road east from the Snowdon Iron Mine, there were no other mortgages or registered claims on the railway. In April 1887, the capital stock of the IB&O was increased from $100,000 to $9,000,000 but not to exceed $40,000 per mile. This would allow the construction of 250 miles of new line - a distance that would take it to some point along the Ottawa River. In financing railways, it was not the practice of the owners to pay for the construction of the railway from their own pockets. Instead, they went looking for "pools" of money that they could borrow from. The favourite form of financing was to sell bonds to rich investors that were secured by a first mortgage on the real assets of the railway. Railway bonds were hot investment items in the late 1800s as railway fever gripped the western world. Most of the investors in railway bonds were from Britain with a smaller market in the United States. Concurrent with the increase in the capital stock, in April 1887, the IB&O shareholders authorized the issuance of $3,750,000 in bonds in the amount of $20,000 per mile from Orillia to Ottawa. The bonds were to be secured by a first mortgage on the real property of the railway in the amount of $3,500,000. The bond issue was to consist of 3,750 bonds in the amount of $1,000 each with interest at 6% per annum - 30 year term with an option to increase the term to 40 years or to reduce the interest rate to 5% per annum. Interest would be payable in the cities of Toronto, New York, or London England. The issuance of bonds requires the appointment of a trustee to look after the collective interests of the bondholders. In this case, the appointed trustees were the Farmers Loan and Trust Company of New York city and the Trust Corporation of Ontario. Now, all of the above sounds pretty impressive. Unfortunately for the IB&O, investors weren't interested in a railway line in the rocky northern terrain of Central Ontario. Throughout the life of the IB&O, no bonds were ever sold. However, $450,000 in bonds were used as collateral security for loans obtained from J.H. Plummer and Z.A. Lash for construction purposes. Up until this time, the majority of shares were held by Charles J. Pusey with the following nominal shareholders.
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