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This essay examines the rise and fall in the Canadian West of the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees (UBRE), an industrial union similar to the American Railway Union of the early 1890s. The UBRE entered Canada in 1902, but was unable to disrupt the complex network of craft union organizations which had sprung up in Canada in the preceding decade. It was, as a consequence, largely restricted to organizing previously unorganized clerks, freight handlers, and labourers. It fought a marginally successful strike on the Canadian Northern Railway in 1902, but was defeated by the CPR in 1903. This latter defeat, which had been engineered by the company with the aid and approval of the craft unions and the Canadian government, contributed directly to the rapid decline and ultimate demise of the UBRE. This ended the last major attempt to organize North American railway workers on industrial rather than craft lines.