Here's a photo I took on August 26, 1976, FORTY-SIX YEARS AGO, when I made a one-week trip to British Columbia and Alberta.

On an overcast and dreary morning, here we see the British Columbia Railway's Caribou Dayliner getting ready to depart the 1950s era North Vancouver station. Today's train would be making a round trip to Lillooet as part of daily service. Three-times-per-week the train continued beyond Lillooet to Prince George.

This photo shows a little more of the train station that even featured a restaurant when it first opened. In the 1950s and 1960s, the province invested a lot of money in what was then called the Pacific Great Eastern Railway that included construction of entirely new rail lines between North Vancouver and Squamish, plus an extension to Prince George and several areas in the far north of the province. In 1996 I rode one of those system-wide tours using Budd RDCs of the British Columbia Railway that were sponsored by the West Coast Railway Association.

Since this photo was taken, almost all of the British Columbia Railway has been taken over by Canadian National, the only exception being a small division that serves Roberts Bank. The Caribou Dayliner has been discontinued and the passenger station in North Vancouver has been torn down. The BCOL's fleet of Rail Diesel Cars have either been scrapped, placed in museums or found other owners. One of them was blown up for an episode of "The X Files", which was almost exclusively filmed in British Columbia.

E.T.T.S.