Canadian Adventure: Northern British Columbia 1999...

As we headed North on my last family holiday to Canada in 1999, I visited Prince George on my 19th birthday and of course that meant hunting out the railway...

Alas, no trains, despite it being a Monday but we were at an outpost of the railway system. Canadian National interchanged with the British Columbia Railway here, and I've memories of wide bodies Dash 8s in that lovely Red/White/Blue livery (gosh if I had the space!!!). The railway was provincially owned and subject to political interference - later passed on to the privatised Canadian National (which was still state owned when I visited), but it had somewhat a feeling of the underdog. Back in 1989 I'd witnessed it on Vancouver's north shore, both the red/white/blue and green diesels as well as the Royal Hudson steam excursion... I think I remember the Caribou day liner from that trip to, but I've no photos apart from the steam engine as I only had a basic print camera and was 9!

All I remember of Prince George was it felt deserted. Perhaps I visited at a break, or perhaps it was just that sort of a town. Freight cars dotted around the yard but nothing much happening - but oh, that blue sky, that clear blue mountain blue sky. Wonderfully evocative for me even today.

As we drove north we left the railway and headed up the Cassiar Highway, built for the Cassiar asbestos mine in northern British Columbia. My Dad mentioned there had been plans to build a railway to exploit the natural resources of the area (he was a lecturer specialising in Canada and it's socio political history and had a white paper on the Yukon transportation policy of the 1960s - I've still got it in my library). That was too much for me and I spent hours gazing out of the window looking for traces. Every now and then you'd see a bridge or cutting as the road passed close, and at this point I managed to scramble up from the road and grab this photo, looking north IIRC to Dease Lake. This was and is a complete white elephant... yes it had cost twice it's initial estimates, of course this always happens with government funded infrastructure projects, but all the grading had been done to Dease Lake, you'd have thought you may as well lay the track - as a means for generating interest in the area and exploiting the resources for the future... the original white paper saw the line extend North and up to Whitehorse, eventually opening up the vast mineral resources of the Yukon to the rest of mainland Canada. Perhaps, for someone with lots of space, this would make a magnificent 'what if' project. Anyhow, I've copied some information from Wikipedia below which gives some context, and a map.

These two photos were again taken from slides using my iPad as a back light and my iPhone to capture the image. The quality isn't great never the less I hope they help tell an interesting story. I hope you have a good weekend, and perhaps at some future point I'll dig out my White Pass slides, and then those from my travels in Newfoundland in 2001. Until then more soon...

Quote from Wikipedia:

In the 1960s, a new line had been projected to run northwest from Fort St. James to Dease Lake, 412 miles (663 km) away. On October 15, 1973, the first 125 miles (201 km) of the extension to Lovell 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, 263 miles (423 km) 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 and Takla Landing.

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