Trolley Tuesday 1/25/22 - The British Columbia Electric Railway

The province of British Columbia has always been known as the "Final Frontier" of Canada's westward expansion. To the railroads like Canadian Pacific and Canadian National, there was nothing more imperative or essential than gaining a connection to the Pacific Ocean. The strongest outpost in that province proved to be Vancouver, whose reputation as a Canadian jewel city and popular filming location ensures its longevity and legacy in the eyes of many. Yet, before the Hollywood cameras, British Columbia was known for another rolling icon that took after the utility-owned interurbans of Midwest America: the British Columbia Electric Railway. On today's (belated) Trolley Tuesday, we look back on the BCER as it grew in the Saltwater City and prospered by land until the inevitable end.

E Pluribus, Unum Fortissimum Est

The first passenger train to arrive in Vancouver, 1887.
(Vancouver is Awesome)

    Like most streetcar systems in Canada, the British Columbia Electric Railway (BCER) originally began rather late in history, with its constituent companies being established between 1890 and 1891. Three years prior, in 1887, the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) had finally reached Vancouver from Montreal and brought with it the promise of progress and modernity for the then-small town of 1,000 people. By 1890, that number exploded into 13,000 people as many fled the established metropolitan areas in the east for the relative openness of the West Coast. Utility companies also began taking notice, as the natural resources around the area made for rich hydroelectric projects that powered Vancouver Islands' cities and its interurban systems.

Greater Victoria's streetcar lines, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. 
(Skyrise Cities)

NETL Streetcar No. 32 is caught in Esquimalt in 1893.
(Derek Hayes)

    On February 22, 1890, the first street railway was established in Victoria, the capital of British Columbia on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. The National Electric Tramway & Lighting Company Limited (NETL) was quite unique among other Canadian street railways at the time, as it was established by a utility company rather than established under a private individual. Its time in the sun alone was not very long, however, as on June 27, 1890, the Vancouver Electric Railway & Light Company (VERL) was established on the mainland to herald in that city's own streetcar system. By the next year, the first interurban line had been established on October 8, 1891, with the new Vancouver & Westminster Tramway Company (V&WT) connecting Vancouver to the city of New Westminster, 14 miles southeast along the Fraser River and the longest interurban line in Canada at the time.

Two double-truck interurban cars of the Vancouver & Westminster Tramway are seen here in 1891.
(Vancouver Sun)

A political cartoon about the Panic of 1893 by Granger,
showing America's business recovery.
(Fine Art America)

    Despite the boom in Vancouver's population aiding the development of these three railways, they were also stymied by two rather unfortunate events. One was the global economic depression in the wake of the Panic of 1893. While the reasons for this Panic had everything to do with the United States and unfettered capitalism overseas, in Vancouver this sent all three railways into receivership after their owners lost thousands in the ensuing economic downtown. The only cure was to amalgamate, which occurred on June 4, 1895 as all three companies now formed the Consolidated Railway & Light Company (CRLC) Injected with fresh cash from both local and international syndicates in London, England, the new company assumed the operations, rolling stock, and debts of its predecessors and looked to the next year with high expectations. 

They unfortunately needn't wait long for tragedy to strike again.

The Point Ellice Bridge Disaster

    May 26, 1896.

Vancouver Electric Railway No. 12, similar to No. 16.
(University of Manitoba)

    It was no less an auspicious day in British Columbia than the birthday of Queen Victoria, and festivities were already underway on Vancouver Island. Within Victoria was the Point Ellice Bridge, which ran over the Upper Harbour separating the main city from Victoria West and Esquimalt. The thin box-truss bridge had a nasty reputation of being under-maintained and nowhere was this more evident than Queen Victoria's birthday, when a heavily-loaded CRLC No. 16 (a single-truck 16-foot closed streetcar built in 1890) began crossing the bridge en route to Esquimalt with 140 passengers and a crew of two. Midway through crossing, the bridge suddenly gave way from under the car and plunged itself into the depths of the Upper Harbour, landing on its side. Immediately waterlogged and with the passengers panicking, only those on the left side were able to escape. 55 men, women, and children packed into the left half of the car were drowned while the 85 other passengers and crew were able to swim ashore. It was the worst streetcar disaster in Canada.

The remains of Car No. 16 are washed ashore,
with the destroyed Point Ellice Bridge in the background.
(Point Ellice House)

    A coroner's jury was held on June 12, 1896, which found both the CRLC and the city council of Victoria negligent for the disaster. For the CRLC, their operating practices were put under scrutiny for allowing No. 16 to run overloaded whether or not it exceeded the bridge's designed load; for the Victoria city council, their ill maintenance of the bridge and lack of traffic control to not exceed the specified load was targeted. A third factor ended up being the bridge's design and construction, as it was an all-welded bridge (at a time when welded construction was still at its infancy) rather than riveted construction. The consequences for the CRLC were dire as it was again forced back into receivership due to the hefty payouts it made to the victims' families. After another injection of cash from London, the company emerged from receivership by April 3, 1897 to become the British Columbia Electric Railway. 

Picking Up Power

The abandoned Buntzen Lake Powerhouse 2 on the shores of Lake Buntzen,
famous for appearing in many horror films. This powerhouse was built in 1914.
(Freshdaily)

Columbia Street in New Westminster, circa 1906.
(Unknown Author)

    Despite this being the third "promising future" in the company's history, the BCER's reorganization also left them in a precarious position. With no local capital backing them up, the company was forced to construct its own streetcars at their New Westminster shop, beginning in 1903, to both provide local business and avoid nasty importation costs from other entrenched manufacturers across Canada (like Canadian Car, Preston, and Ottawa) or the United States (Brill, Kuhlmann, St. Louis, et al). The company also began leasing lines from the larger Canadian Pacific, such as the 15-mile Vancouver & Lulu Island Railway (V&LI) between Vancouver and Steveston, to electrify and grow out its coverage with minimal tracklaying. Aiding electrification was the utilization of Buntzen Lake, a natural lake 20 miles up Vancouver Harbor and named after the BCER's first general manager, Johannes Buntzen. In 1903, the first hydroelectric plant in Vancouver was established there with a tunnel running through Eagle Mountain from Coquitlam Lake to Buntzen Lake; the former lake was them dammed up.

A map of the BCER system with the new Chilliwack interurban opened, post-1910.
(Public Domain)

A BC Electric train at Chilliwack, date unknown.
(BC Archives)

    Despite being unsupported by the city councils they served or by local businesses, the BCER's gamble worked out. By 1904, they were operating 69 streetcars and had served well over 8.8 million passengers between Vancouver, New Westminster, and their island operations in Victoria. Freight had also grown in importance within the BCER, as it also worked as a local freight interchange with the Canadian Pacific. By 1909, a new ten-mile interurban line opened up in Marpole (halfway between Vancouver and Steveston) under the V&LI for "immediate lease and electrification by B.C. Electric", but the best was yet to come. In 1910, the railway committed to a "big eastern push" up the Fraser River to Chilliwack, some sixty miles east of Vancouver and glancing the US border with Washington State at Abbotsford. When the line opened on October 4, 1910, it was nothing short of a triumph as freight and passengers kept the line healthy and well-populated, as well as aiding in the development of the lower Fraser Valley. This was now the longest interurban line in Canada.

An artistic representation of the New Westminster depot in 1926.
(Brian Croft)

The BCER depot and company headquarters in Vancouver.
(Vancouver is Awesome)

    With the added growth of the system, the BCER opened their grand two-story New Westminster interurban depot less than a year later. The new building featured ticket offices and waiting rooms on the top floor and concessions and lunch counters on the ground floors, with the tracks taking a diagonal stab underneath. In Vancouver, a new business headquarters and terminal building also opened by 1912 to accommodate new interurban lines to Burnaby Lake and Central Park from Vancouver, and to Queensborough and Fraser Mills from New Westminster. There was even a steam railway line, the 6-mile Stave Lake Branch, which was isolated from the main electric railway and connected the Stave Falls power plant to the CPR junction at Ruskin. By 1913, the eve of the Great War, the BCER had carried over 69 million passengers and had 448,000 tons of freight pass through its new 16th Street Yard in Westminster. 

Notable Interurban Cars and Streetcars

The original Vancouver Electric carbarn at Main and Prior, 1894.
(Spacing Vancouver)

BCER Observation Car No. 123 on an excursion tour, 1950.
(Vancouver Archives)

    Throughout its existence, the BCER rostered 460 city cars and 84 constantly-rebuilt interurban cars. Of their roster, the New Westminster shops built 192 streetcars and interurbans between 1903 and 1914, with the rest being constructed by outside manufacturers after the BCER got its finances together. Unlike most of Canada, these cars were all standard-gauge to accommodate freight interchanging. Most of the original fleet from the 1890s were bolstered by "converted horsecar" designs, single-truck cars with open end platforms that were crude in construction and low in capacity. Later streetcar models built by the New Westminster shops and other smaller BCER shops sought to emulate the popular J.G. Brill "Semi-Convertible" double-truck streetcar design by the turn of the century. BCER even built their own pair of  Montreal-style observation cars and were popularly featured on postcards. Other highlights of the trolley fleet included the 700-series cars from Canadian Car and Foundry, the only multiple-unit streetcars to work on the BCER. Eventually 36 PCC cars were bought from St. Louis Car and Canadian Car between 1938 and 1943, in an effort to modernize their streetcar fleet.

A standard BCER double-truck "convertible" design home-built by the New Westminster shops, in 1948.
(Ernie L. Plant)

A BCER PCC on Hastings Street, 1950. The car is a first-generation-built from 1939 by St. Louis and Canadian Car.
(Joe Testagrose)

BCER No. 1206 as built, when it was named "Richmond", in 1905.
(Bill Volkmer, Don Ross)

BCER Nos. 1225 (leading) and 1224 (trailing) in service,
bound for Steveston, April 6, 1952.
(Vancouver Archives)

    For the interurban fleet, the BCER was more careful in its consideration based on the lines the cars were assigned to. The initial batch of interurban cars were built by the BCER's own shops at New Westminster and carried names instead of numbers like "Vancouver" (1201), "Delta" (1203), "Surrey" (1204), and so on. To accommodate the streetcar lines, the interurban cars were built to a strict 50'4" length, sitting 56 people inside and making 300HP from its four GE 204A motors. Beginning in 1911, these cars were rebuilt and renumbered into the 1201 series, which featured updated paintwork, the loss of their double-length stained glass windows, and an improved front end with end doors. These smaller cars worked primarily out on the Marpole and Burnaby Lake lines, and later cars were built by outside sources like St. Louis Car. The larger set of interurbans, the 1300 series, were built in 1911 for the epic run to Chilliwack and were, thus, larger and more luxurious than the smaller 1201 series. The 1300s sported a length of 55'4", a capacity for 60 people, and were more powerful and faster than the 1201 series. Both series of cars were constructed of wood and, despite being rebuilt several times to suit ever-changing modern tastes, never once looked their age in an era of steel interurbans. 

The larger 1300 class interurbans at Vancouver in April, 1949. Note the handsome arched windows.
(Don Ross)

Rails to Rubber

One of the first BCER buses in 1926, this one working
on the University Line.
(UBC Library)

    1923 was an auspicious year for the BCER as it inaugurated the first city bus service on March 19, with their first intercity bus service between Vancouver and New Westminster arriving on May 1, 1924. Despite the railway being at its peak with 118 miles of track both on the mainland and in Victoria, it did not take long for closures to start happening. The first was the Saanich line on the Victoria system, which closed due to inadequate ridership on November 1, 1924. In 1926, the BCER provided bus service from Vancouver to Chilliwack alongside their existing interurban lines, and four years later the new bus lines to MacDonald and Granville Street South all but announced the obvious to plenty of riders waiting for streetcar lines to those locations: streetcar lines were on the way out. A new bridge across the Fraser River in New Westminster ended the entire street railway operations in the city, cutting off 167 miles of streetcar lines and 168 miles of interurban track on December 5, 1938.

The last Victorian streetcar in British Columbia.
(Skyrise Cities)

    Despite the artificial importance placed on the BCER, by 1944 the writing was finally on the wall as the BCER announced that its railway division would come under the "Rails-to-Rubber" plan on September 30. This audacious plan, which cut into the largest interurban and streetcar network in all of Canada (327 combined miles versus Toronto's 266 and Montreal's 279 miles), called for a multi-million dollar elimination of all but their most essential streetcar lines and mass replacement of its old fleet with modern second-generation PCC cars. Service to North Vancouver ended on April 24, 1947, the first victim of "Rails to Rubber". The next year, Victoria's streetcar lines declared independence from their continued existence as they were closed on July 4, 1948. One month later, mainland Vancouver opened the Fraser-Canbie trolleybus line, the first of its kind. By January 1950, despite the Rails-to-Rubber plan working to terrifying effect, the BCER was able to carry 148 million riders across its streetcars, interurbans, trolley coaches, and buses, while their freight division interchanged nearly 1 million tons of freight between the CPR, Canadian National, Milwaukee Road, and Northern Pacific. 

The last Marpole-Steveston Train arrives into Marpole on February 28, 1958.
1231 does the honors, with 1225 trailing.
(BCER Company)

On October 1, the BCER formally abandoned interurban service on the Chilliwack Line and made it freight-only. The next year, the Vancouver-Marpole line was "bustituted" with a trolley bus that stopped one mile short of Marpole for no reason. October 23, 1953 saw the end of the Burnaby Lake and Central Park Lines. After 11 years, the Vancouver city lines finally met their end on April 24, 1955, which was celebrated as "Rails-to-Rubber Day". Free rides were given on the PCCs from 1 to 5PM on the last remaining line before all were scrapped by that evening.

This now left the last two interurban lines in Marpole, one to Steveston and one to New Westminster, as the only remaining operating passenger section of the BCER. The two lines limped on until November 18, 1956, when the New Westminster line closed to service, and then on February 28, 1958, the very last train between Marpole and Steveston departed inbound to Marpole at 1AM. By the time the last run, led by interurban car No. 1225, crawled its way to Marpole, it was over. Nearly 70 years of Canada's biggest and most elaborate street railway had come to a close, and it would be another 27 years until a successor, the Vancouver Skytrain, brought light rail back to Vancouver (and I will cover that later in its own post).

The opening of the Vancouver Skytrain on December 11, 1985.
(Daily Hive) 

What Happened Next

BCER No. 1225 takes the connecting track off the loop and onto the main at the 
Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris, California, USA, in 2004.
(John Smatlak)

A handsomely-restored BCER No. 1304 is formally presented
for a return to service on September 9, 2017, having been once again
named "Connaught", the name it was built with.
(FVHRS)

    When the BCER began closing its various lines under its "Rails to Rubber" scheme, many cars were unceremoniously burned under the Burrard Bridge while others were sold as bunkhouses, storage sheds, or as decorations. Today, seven interurban cars and three streetcars survive in varying states around British Columbia. The southernmost preserved car was originally No. 1225, the last car to run on BCER's final day. Originally built by the St. Louis Car Company in 1913 and operated on the Marpole-Steveston and Burnaby Lake Lines, the wooden interurban was originally preserved by the Orange Empire Railway Museum (now the Southern California Railway Museum) in Perris, California, USA, after being purchased directly from BCER in 1958. No. 1225 remained stateside and operable for almost 50 years until downsizing and a refocused museum saw the car being sent back to British Columbia as part of the Fraser Valley Heritage Railway Society (FVHR) of Surrey, BC. There, 1225 underwent a rail-to-wire restoration back into original condition, alongside interurban cars No. 1207, 1223 1231, and 1304, the latter of which was last car to operate on the Chilliwack Line. Due to the absence of a wire, the FVHR run their interurban cars with a diesel generator for the time being.

BCER No. 1225 in a happier home at the Fraser Valley Heritage Railway.
(FVHRS)

Oregon Electric No. 21 at Brooks, Oregon,
wearing its Edmonton Transit colors.
(OERHS)

    Other notable survivors include two city cars still within Vancouver's city limits. Little No. 53, a BCER original from 1903, is now being used inside an "Old Spaghetti Factory" in Vancouver, while the much larger No. 153's body (a 1908 John Stephenson double-truck convertible car) is on now display at the Museum of North Vancouver after spending much of its life in city storage. Other survivors can be found around British Columbia like City Car No. 400 (a J.G. Brill Birney car now operating at the Nelson Electric Tramway Society in Nelson, BC), interurban car No. 1220 (being restored at the Steveston Tram Museum in Richmond, BC), and No. 1235 (the farthest-east BCER car, on display at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, ON). Two ex-Oregon Electric steeplecabs also exist, with one (Ex-OE No. 21) repatriated back to the US and on display at the Oregon Electric Railway Museum in Brooks, Oregon, USA, while the other (No. 22) is undergoing restoration at the West Coast Railway Association in Squamish, BC.

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today included a 2010 Canadian Rail article on the BCER by Henry Ewert, the Southern California Railway Museum of Perris, CA, the Oregon Electric Railway Museum of Brooks, Oregon, the Fraser Valley Heritage Railway Society of Surrey, BC, the Steveston Tram Museum in Richmond, BC, and the credits under each photo caption. The trolley gifs in our posts are made by myself and can be found under “Motorman Reymond’s Railroad Gif Carhouse”. On Thursday, we finish the month off by looking at the interurban cars of... the Pacific Great Eastern? For now, you can follow myself or my editor on Twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble stand, or purchase my editor's self-developed board game! It's like Ticket to Ride, but cooler! (and you get to support him through it!) Until next time, ride safe!