BC Rail

The British Columbia Railway Company , commonly known as BC Rail, is a railway in the Canadian province of British Columbia.

Chartered as a private company in 1912 as the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE), it was acquired by the provincial government in 1918. In 1972 it was renamed to the British Columbia Railway, and in 1984 it took on the BC Rail branding. From 1978 to 2000, BC Rail was highly profitable, posting profits in every year throughout that period.

Until 2004 it operated as the third-largest railway in Canada, providing freight, passenger, and excursion rail services throughout BC on of mainline track. It also ran the Royal Hudson services, as well as the premier of British Columbia's private train.

It was designated a Class II Railway until 2004. In 2004, the freight operations (including a vast amount of land, buildings, and all rolling stock) of BC Rail were leased to Canadian National Railway (CN) for an initial period of 60 years, with the exception of the Deltaport Spur, for the price of $550 million.

BC Rail remains an operating Crown corporation today. It retains ownership of the entire right of way stretching from Prince George to North Vancouver, as well as ownership of all assets leased to CN. BC Rail retains significant real estate investments throughout BC, and a stretch of track from Roberts Bank Superport in Delta to Langley. The planned sale of this stretch was cancelled after the initial BC Rail scandal.

History

1912–1948 The Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE) was incorporated on February 27, 1912, to build a line from Vancouver north to a connection with the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTP) at Prince George. Although independent from the GTP, the PGE had agreed that the GTP, whose western terminus was at the remote northern port of Prince Rupert, could use their line to gain access to Vancouver. The railway was given its name due to a loose association with England's Great Eastern Railway. Its financial backers were Timothy Foley, Patrick Welch, and John Stewart, whose construction firm of Foley, Welch and Stewart was among the leading railway contractors in North America. Upon incorporation, the PGE took over the Howe Sound and Northern Railway, which at that point had built of track north of Squamish. The British Columbia government gave the railway a guarantee of principal and 4% interest (later increased to 4.5% to make the bonds saleable) on the construction bonds of the railway.

By 1915, the line was opened from Squamish north to Chasm. The railway was starting to run out of money, however. In 1915 it failed to make an interest payment on its bonds, obliging the provincial government to make good on its bond guarantee. In the 1916 provincial election campaign, the Liberal Party alleged that some of the money advanced to the railway for bond guarantee payments had instead gone into Conservative Party campaign funds. In the election, the Conservatives, who had won 40 of 42 seats in the legislature in the 1912 election, lost to the Liberals. The Liberals then took Foley, Welch and Stewart to court to recover $5 million of allegedly unaccounted funds. In early 1918, the railway's backers agreed to pay the government $1.1 million and turn the railway over to the government.

When the government took over the railway, two separate sections of trackage had been completed: A small section between North Vancouver and Horseshoe Bay, and one between Squamish and Clinton. By 1921, the provincial government had extended the railway to a point north of Quesnel, still south of a connection to Prince George, but it was not extended further. The track north of Quesnel was later removed. Construction of the line between Horseshoe Bay and Squamish was given a low priority because there was already a barge in operation between Squamish and Vancouver, and the railway wanted to discontinue operations on the North Vancouver-Horseshoe Bay line. However, the railway had an agreement with the municipality of West Vancouver to provide passenger service that it was unable to get out of until 1928, when they paid the city $140,000 in support of its road-building programme. The last trains on the line ran on November 29, 1928, and the line fell into disuse, but was never formally abandoned.

For the next 20 years the railway would run from "nowhere to nowhere". It did not connect with any other railway, and there were no large urban centres on its route. It existed mainly to connect logging and mining operations in the British Columbia Interior with the coastal town of Squamish, where resources could then be transported by sea. The government still intended for the railway to reach Prince George, but the resources to do so were not available, especially during the Great Depression and World War II. The unfortunate state of the railway caused it to be given nicknames such as "Province's Great Expense", "Prince George Eventually", "Past God's Endurance", "Please Go Easy", and "Puff, Grunt and Expire".

1949–1971

Starting in 1949, the Pacific Great Eastern began to expand. Track was laid north of Quesnel to a junction with the Canadian National Railway at Prince George. That line opened on November 1, 1952. Between 1953 and 1956 the PGE constructed a line between Squamish and North Vancouver. The PGE used their former right-of-way between North Vancouver and Horseshoe Bay, to the dismay of some residents of West Vancouver who, mistakenly believing the line was abandoned, had encroached on it. The line opened on August 27, 1956. By 1958 the PGE had reached north from Prince George to Fort St. John and to Dawson Creek where it met the Northern Alberta Railways.

In 1958, Premier of British Columbia W.A.C. Bennett boasted that he would extend the railway to the Yukon and Alaska, and further extension of the railway was undertaken in the 1960s. A spur was constructed to Mackenzie in 1966. A third line was extended west from the mainline (somewhat north of Prince George) to Fort St. James. It was completed on August 1, 1968. The largest construction undertaken in the 1960s was to extend the mainline from Fort St. John north to Fort Nelson, less than away from the Yukon. The Fort Nelson Subdivision was opened by Premier Bennett on September 10, 1971. Unfortunately, the opening of the line was overshadowed by the inaugural train derailing south of Williams Lake, south of Prince George.

1972–1989

The railway underwent two changes of name during this time period. In 1972, the railway's name was changed to the British Columbia Railway (BCR). In 1984, the BCR was restructured. Under the new organization, BC Rail Ltd. was formed, owned jointly by the British Columbia Railway Company (BCRC) and by a BCRC subsidiary, BCR Properties Ltd. The rail operations became known as BC Rail.

In 1973, the British Columbia government acquired and restored an ex-Canadian Pacific Railway 4-6-4 steam locomotive of the type known as "Royal Hudsons", a name that King George VI permitted the class to be called after the Canadian Pacific Railway used one on the royal train in 1939. The locomotive that the government acquired, numbered 2860, was built in 1940 and was the first one built as a Royal Hudson. The government then leased it, along with ex-Canadian Pacific 2-8-0 #3716 to the British Columbia Railway, which started excursion service with the locomotive between North Vancouver and Squamish on June 20, 1974. The train ran between June and September on Wednesdays through Sundays from 1974 to 2001. During this time, the Royal Hudson Steam Train was the only regularly scheduled, mainline steam operation on a Class 1 railroad in North America.

In the 1960s, a new line had been projected to run northwest from Fort St. James to Dease Lake, away. On October 15, 1973, the first of the extension to Lovell (lat 55°33′, long 126°2′) were opened. The cost of the line was significantly greater than what was estimated, however. Contractors working on the remainder of the line alleged that the railway had misled them regarding the amount of work required so that it could obtain low bids, and took the railway to court.

The Dease Lake line was starting to appear increasingly uneconomical. There was a world decline in the demand for asbestos and copper, two main commodities that would be hauled over the line. As well, the Cassiar Highway that already served Dease Lake had recently been upgraded. Combined with the increasing construction costs, the Dease Lake line could no longer be justified. Construction stopped on April 5, 1977. Track had been laid to Jackson Creek (lat 56°50, long 128°12′), past Fort St. James, and clearing and grading were in progress on the rest of the extension. It had cost $168 million to that point, well over twice the initial estimate. The trackbed can be seen on Google Earth all the way to Dease Lake, via the small towns of Leo Creek (lat 55°3′, long 125°33′) and Takla Landing (lat 55°29′, long 125°58′).

The management and operation of the railway had been called into question, and on February 7, 1977, the provincial government appointed a Royal Commission, the McKenzie Royal Commission, to investigate the railway. Its recommendations were released on August 25, 1978. It recommended that construction not continue on the of roadbed between Dease Lake and the current end of track, and that trains be terminated at Driftwood (approx. lat 55°42, long 126°15′), past Lovell. The rest of the track would be left in place but not used. In 1983, after logging operations ceased at Driftwood and traffic declined sharply, the Dease Lake line was closed. However, it was reopened in 1991 and, as of 2005, extends to a point called Minaret Creek, British Columbia (lat 56°20′, long 127°17′), still over south of Dease Lake. Many of the commission's other recommendations, including the abandonment of the Fort Nelson line, and discontinuation of uneconomic operations such as passenger services, were not followed.

In the early 1980s the railway built a new line and acquired another. The Tumbler Ridge Subdivision, a electrified branch line, opened in 1983 to the Quintette and Bullmoose mines, two coal mines northeast of Prince George that produced coal for Japan. It has the lowest crossing of the Rocky Mountains by a railway, at . There are two large tunnels under the mountains: The Table Tunnel, long, and the Wolverine Tunnel, long. Electrified owing to the long tunnels and close proximity to the W. A. C. Bennett Dam and transmission lines, it was one of the few electrified freight lines in North America. Although initially profitable, the traffic on the line was never as high as initially predicted, and by the 1990s was under one train per day. The railway had incurred much debt building the branch line, and the expensive, unprofitable operations on the branch line could not help to repay that debt. In 1984, BC Rail acquired the British Columbia Harbours Board Railway, a line that connects three class I railways with Roberts Bank, an ocean terminal that handles coal shipments. Since the line had been constructed in 1969, it had been leased to the CPR, Burlington Northern Railroad, and Canadian National Railway in succession.

1990–2003

In the early 1990s, the provincial government reduced subsidies to BC Rail. As a result, BC Rail, burdened with several money-losing services that it was required to operate, saw its debtload grow more than sixfold between 1991 and 2001.