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West Vancouver author
chronicles local trains

EACH MORNING at 7:30, B.C. Rail’s Cariboo-bound
dayliner chugs out Gf North Vancouver’s station heading

for gold rush country.

Winding its way along the North
Shore, the train begins a journey
that is described as one of the
greatest on the continent.

But the trip has not always been
quite so easy, remembers West
Vancouver resident Timothy Hor-
ton, who has written a book on the
equipment and operations of the
Pacific Great Eastern Railway.

“The journey people will
remember is taking the Union
Steamship from Vancouver to
Squamish and then taking the train
to Quesnel,"’ the 26-year-old rail
historian explains.

Up until 1956, North and West
Vancouver were not included along
the rail route to the interior. Four
years earlier, service was extended
from Quesnel to Prince George;
but the North Shore was left out.
A gap still remained.

in :954, a line was pushed from
Squamish to North Vancouver,
completing the route and at last
linking the municipality directly
with the Cariboo. ‘‘That service
still remains today,’’ says Horton.
‘*Few people realize that is one of
the great train rides in North
America and it starts right here in
our municipality.

‘It’s a fabulous journey,’’ he
says.

Horton became interested in
trains at an early age. In his native
England, Horton’s family lived
right next to one of the country’s
major rail lines. ‘‘We had trains
roaring by day and night,’’ he
laughs.

When he was only a year old, his
father gave him a model train set

BARRI

Reporter

and sparked a passion that is still
with him today. ‘I was introduced
to model railways and I’ve stayed
with it,’’ he says.

But living as he does in a small
West Vancouver apartment, Hor-
ton has no room to run the model
sets. ‘‘They’re all in storage,’’ he
laments.

As a boy, he says he had no
aspirations to become a train
engineer. ‘It was more of an ad-
miration of these things
operating,’’ he says.

For his book, Horton researched
technical information on individu-
al engines and cacriages. Often this
meant turning to American rail
historians. ‘‘These coaches were all
hand-me-downs from railways in
the states,’’ he explains.

“IT went to historians in the
United States whose area of exper-
tise was the railway that those par-
ticular cars came from.”’

And for his detailed look at how
the railway system operated, Hor-
ton talked to former employees of
the Pacific Great Eastern Railway,
now BC Rail. Many, he found, live
on the North Shore.

“What I wanted to do was find
out just how the railway operated
then,”’ he says. .

Finding photographs for the
book was no easy feat. Starting
with the provincial archives, Hor-
ton found some usable photos. For
the rest, he turned to rail buffs in
the hope they would have some of

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NEWS photo Noil Lucen'

WEST Vancouver train historian, Timotay Horton, displays a copy of his book The Pacific Great Eastern
Railway. Written last year and published in June, volume one of a planned three volume series examines the

development of the railway's operations and equipment.

the needed photos.

They did.

Out of 25 photos in the book,
only three come from the archives
— one comes from BC Rail and
the rest come from private citizens.
Nine photos come from the United
States. “The steam trains were
popular with American tourists,”
he says in explanation.

Horton’s book is the first in a
series of three volumes tracing the
development of the railway’s
operations and equipment.

42030 SOUTH PARK ROYAL
(Upstairs Gallery)

926-3818

OPEN SUNDAYS

Park Royal’s
Community Flea Market

Tuesday, September 30, South Malll,
Gallery Level 10 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
For one day only, Park Royal merchants
share their South Mall with local
charitable organizations.

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