The Fraser Valley Historical Railway Society is restoring an old interurban streetcar system, which it plans to operate as a heritage streetcar system, centered on Surrey, British Columbia. [1] [2] The heritage service began in June 2013. [1] [2] [3] It is one of two operating historical tramways in the province.
The heritage line is 7.4-kilometre (4.6 mi) long, [3] using only a small fraction of the original 120-kilometre (75 mi) interurban line of the British Columbia Electric Railway that connected Vancouver to Chilliwack. [3]
The interurban runs 4 times a day on weekends; the entire journey takes 55 minutes. [4]
One of two operational interurbans is run on weekend, from stations at Cloverdale to Sullivan. [5]
Volunteers restored the stations to their appearance at the height of the old line's service.
In 2016, the Edmonton Radial Railway Society donated the former Edmonton Transit Service 2001, a 1912 electric locomotive that once ran on this rail line. This locomotive was in turn donated to the Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society in 2017. This is because the Oregon Electric Railway was the original owner of this locomotive.
A heritage railway or heritage railroad is a railway operated as living history to recreate or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period in the history of rail transport.
Surrey is a city in British Columbia, Canada. It is located south of the Fraser River on the Canada–United States border. It is a member municipality of the Metro Vancouver regional district and metropolitan area. Mainly a suburban city, Surrey is the province's second-largest by population after Vancouver and the third-largest by area after Abbotsford and Prince George. Seven neighbourhoods in Surrey are designated town centres: Cloverdale, Fleetwood, Guildford, Newton, South Surrey, and City Centre encompassed by Whalley.
The Pacific Electric Railway Company, nicknamed the Red Cars, was a privately owned mass transit system in Southern California consisting of electrically powered streetcars, interurban cars, and buses and was the largest electric railway system in the world in the 1920s. Organized around the city centers of Los Angeles and San Bernardino, it connected cities in Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Bernardino County and Riverside County.
The interurban is a type of electric railway, with tram-like electric self-propelled rail cars which run within and between cities or towns. The term "interurban" is usually used in North America, with other terms used outside it. They were very prevalent in North America between 1900 and 1925 and were used primarily for passenger travel between cities and their surrounding suburban and rural communities. The concept spread to countries such as Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Poland. Interurban as a term encompassed the companies, their infrastructure, their cars that ran on the rails, and their service. In the United States, the early 1900s interurban was a valuable economic institution, when most roads between towns, many town streets were unpaved, and transportation and haulage was by horse-drawn carriages and carts.
The British Columbia Electric Railway (BCER) was an historic railway which operated in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. Originally the parent company for, and later a division of, BC Electric Company, the BCER assumed control of existing streetcar and interurban lines in southwestern British Columbia in 1897, and operated the electric railway systems in the region until the last interurban service was discontinued in 1958. During and after the streetcar era, BC Electric also ran bus and trolleybus systems in Greater Vancouver and bus service in Greater Victoria; these systems subsequently became part of BC Transit, and the routes in Greater Vancouver eventually came under the control of TransLink. Trolley buses still run in the City of Vancouver with one line extending into Burnaby.
Conservation and restoration of rail vehicles aims to preserve historic rail vehicles.
The Minnesota Transportation Museum is a transportation museum in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States.
The Southern Railway of British Columbia, branded as SRY Rail Link is a Canadian short line railway operating in southwestern British Columbia. The main facility is the port at Annacis Island with major import of cars, export of forestry products, and other shipments. The railway has interconnections with three Class I railroads, including Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC), Canadian National (CN) and Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF). It operates a fleet of 29 locomotives, mostly consisting of EMD GP-9 and SW900 locomotives. SRY also currently rosters 2 SD38-2s, an SD38AC and an SD35. Additionally, SRY formerly rostered 4 GMD1s. The railroad also operates a fleet 2,000 rail cars, hauling approximately 70,000 carloads per year. It operates around 123 miles (198 km) of track, 62 miles (100 km) of which is mainline track.
The Vancouver Downtown Historic Railway was a heritage electric railway line that operated from 1998 to 2011 between Granville Island and Science World, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It operated only on weekends and holidays, usually from May to mid-October, and was aimed primarily at tourists. Two restored interurban trams were used on the line, which used a former freight railway right-of-way.
The Yakima Valley Transportation Company was an interurban electric railroad headquartered in Yakima, Washington. It was operator of the city's streetcar system from 1907–1947, and it also provided the local bus service from the 1920s until 1957.
Light rail is a commonly used mode of public transit in North America. The term light rail was coined in 1972 by the Urban Mass Transportation Administration to describe new streetcar transformations which were taking place in Europe and the United States. The Germans used the term Stadtbahn, which is the predecessor to North American light rail, to describe the concept, and many in UMTA wanted to adopt the direct translation, which is city rail. However, in its reports, UMTA finally adopted the term light rail instead.
Streetcars or trolley(car)s were once the chief mode of public transit in hundreds of North American cities and towns. Most of the original urban streetcar systems were either dismantled in the mid-20th century or converted to other modes of operation, such as light rail. Today, only Toronto still operates a streetcar network essentially unchanged in layout and mode of operation.
The Chicago and Joliet Electric Railway, or C&JE, was an electric interurban railway linking the cities of Chicago and Joliet, Illinois. It was the only interurban between those cities and provided a link between the streetcar network of Chicago and the cities along the Des Plaines River Valley in north central Illinois, which were served by the Illinois Valley Division of the Illinois Traction System.
The Edmonton Radial Railway Society (ERRS) restores and operates historic streetcars in Fort Edmonton Park and across the High Level Bridge. It is named after the Edmonton Radial Railway, which began service in 1908 and later became Edmonton Transit Service.
The High Level Bridge Streetcar is a historic streetcar ride over the High Level Bridge in Edmonton, Alberta. It travels from the Strathcona Streetcar Barn & Museum, just north of the Strathcona Farmers Market, in Old Strathcona, to Jasper Plaza south of Jasper Avenue, between 109 Street and 110 Street, in downtown, with three intermediate stops. It operates between the Victoria Day weekend in May, and Thanksgiving weekend in October. It is operated by the Edmonton Radial Railway Society, which operates five more streetcars on a second line in the river valley at Fort Edmonton Park.
The Victoria and Sidney Railway Company (V&S) was one of three railways to operate on the Saanich Peninsula of southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Opened in 1894 the route largely closed in 1919 but a section of track remained in use until 1935.
The Southern California Railway Museum, formerly known as the Orange Empire Railway Museum, is a railroad museum in Perris, California, United States. It was founded in 1956 at Griffith Park in Los Angeles before moving to the former Pinacate Station as the "Orange Empire Trolley Museum" in 1958. It was renamed "Orange Empire Railway Museum" in 1975 after merging with a museum then known as the California Southern Railroad Museum, and adopted its current name in 2019. The museum also operates a heritage railroad on the museum grounds.
The Lake Erie and Northern Railway was an interurban electric railway which operated in the Grand River Valley in Ontario, Canada. The railway owned and operated a north–south mainline which ran from Galt in the north to Port Dover on the shore of Lake Erie in the south. Along the way, it ran through rural areas of Waterloo County, Brant County, and Norfolk County, as well as the city of Brantford, where it had an interchange with the Brantford and Hamilton Electric Railway. Construction on the mainline began in 1913. The railway began operations in 1916 as a subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), which had purchased the line before construction had finished. In 1931, it was consolidated with the Grand River Railway under a single CPR subsidiary, the Canadian Pacific Electric Lines (CPEL), which managed both interurban railways, though they continued to exist as legally separate entities. Passenger service was discontinued in 1955 but electric freight operations continued until 1961, when the LE&N's electric locomotives were replaced by diesel CPR locomotives and the line was de-electrified. In the same year, service on the mainline from Simcoe to Port Dover was discontinued, but the remainder continued to operate as a branchline which as early as 1975 was known as the CP Simcoe Subdivision. The remainder of the line was officially abandoned in the early 1990s, ending almost seventy-five years of operation.
The Fraser Valley Heritage Railway Society is set to launch weekend runs on the original Interurban passenger rail line from Cloverdale to Sullivan return starting this Sunday.
Last weekend, the old interurban electric started rolling the rails again between Cloverdale and Sullivan in Surrey, a heritage project with service on weekends that aims to expand to Scott Road and possibly east into the Valley.
A slice of railway history is coming to life at the foot of 176A Street, where a faithful replica of the original B.C. Electric Railway station that acted as a bustling commuter passenger hub for decades is nearly complete.
Media related to Heritage streetcars in Surrey, BC at Wikimedia Commons