Squamish Railway Museum

"gmctavish needs more space" (gmctavish)
08/07/2017 at 15:52 • Filed to: trainlopnik

Yesterday my girlfriend and I drove up to Squamish and went to the West Coast Railway Association Heritage Park, which is the second largest railway museum in Canada. Because of the location, this one has a strong focus on the Pacific Great Eastern/British Columbia Railway. For those who don’t know, the PGE was renamed BCR in 1972, and was the government owned provincial railway of BC. My dad worked as a track gang foreman for the BCR in late 70s/early 80s. In 2003, the premier decided to sell the railway to CN for $1 billion, in some sort of 30 year at a time lease deal that lets CN renew the lease for free for 990 years. This was after the premier campaigned with the promise that he would not sell the BCR. Some people are still upset about that, I’m personally just bummed that it means the Royal Hudson no longer does regular excursions from North Vancouver to Squamish, which it did from 1974 till 1999.

Royal Hudson 2860

2860 sat from 1999 till 2005, when she was restored for the second time, for about $250,000. She’s still owned by the BC government, but on permanent loan to the WCRA. She’s in perfect working order, and could be doing regular runs from North van to Squamish again, but CN has some sort of no steam policy, so they need special permission to run her outside of their property.

Anyways, here’s a photo dump.