But secretly, they had another plan. They only built the rail line to Inverness. Inverness was where they opened a new coal mine. They used the government money to build a rail line to their own coal mine and never went any further. They wanted the rail line to get their coal to Point Tupper where it could be shipped and sold. The rail line was only 60 miles long, not 100, as they had promised.

The people of Inverness County were angry that the rail line was not going to go all the way to Chéticamp, as had been promised. But MacKenzie and Mann had an answer. Half a rail line was better than none, they said!

MacKenzie and Mann also built rows and rows of red houses for miners to live in. There were more than 80 of these red duplexes. Men came from the countryside to work in the mines because the pay was fair. It was more money than many of them could make fishing and farming.

The large number of red houses caused a bit of a problem for some farmers. The farmers came to town on the weekend to sell their produce. Some miners promised to pay them on payday. However, when the farmers returned for their money, they couldn’t tell one red house from another! Other men came from the Maritimes and even Europe with their families to work in the Inverness mines. So many people came from Belgium, that a part of Inverness was called Belgium Town.