Canadian Railroads > two tone green from the past

=12pxTime table scheduled train No. 23, VP symbol (Vancouver-Peace) departing Williams Lake BC with traffic destined to various terminals on the BC Rail system. The VP symbol originated in North Vancouver and ran the length of the railway to Fort Nelson. At the time BC Rail had a very lucrative TOFC business hauling perishable and non-perishable goods for various large grocery companies, trailer loads for the liquor board, building materials, welding supplies and machinery of all sorts. Quite often the railway would get back haul in the empty trailers, generally lumber or bales of pulp.

I had to do a "crop and zoom" on this image, hopefully it is okay.
Image taken October 1980.
Doug



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/19 08:31 by hoggerdoug.

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Nice catch, loved that scheme.
JB

Excellent use of crop and zoom to make an interesting scene even better.
Bob

One of the fascinations about the 1980's BCRail was how out in the woods in seemed to be ( in other words great scenery ) and yet they were running trailer on flat car trains. Not to mention running drawbar connected and spine style cars. Not sure if it was full trains but I did note some large numbers of such cars.
t4p.

#23 was as constant as the northern star...

Out of North Van around midnight
Lillooet at daybreak, Williams Lake for lunch and Prince at dinnertime....
Loved this train. 

The shot is great Doug. That "Jimmy" is right out of the box having just been delivered. Note that it has not got the 2nd set of ditch lights yet.

Brian E 

Looking at the other slides from that day, I'm quite certain 752 was on it's first trip north after delivery.
Doug

That schedule would explain why I didn't see it very often. How many cars was it? Was it all trailers?
tia.

I do have a couple of cast resin flat car kits in the 'collection'. Lots of details to find to make it right though.

Don't have a car count, but the VP train handled lots & lots of TOFC's every trip. The OV symbol No 38 departing Prince George southbound handled a lot of TOFC empties and some loads.
Doug

TCnR Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That schedule would explain why I didn't see it
> very often. How many cars was it? Was it all
> trailers?
> tia.
>
> I do have a couple of cast resin flat car kits in
> the 'collection'. Lots of details to find to make
> it right though.

Hi  I  started driving at P.G.E in 1971. Later it became British Columbia Railway. In those days we usually shipped around 20 trailers most nights. The exception was Friday nights when there would be over 30 trailers Unless special arrangements were made there were no trailers loaded on the weekend..All loading was done "circus style".There were 4 loading tracks with one just for Prince George as that was the destination of the majority of the trailers.Cutoff time was 20:30 when the yard crew begin to marshall the cars. Once the cars were all coupled they were usually placed ahead of the remote power. The balance of the frain was various empties headed north. Derarture time for # 23 was 22;00 from North Vancouver.I left the railway in 1973 for a 38 year driving job at Canada Safeway. Ironically I spent many hours at the piggyback ramps waiting for trailers as Safeway shipped many trailers by B.C.R. Cheers Greengrocer

Interesting to hear they were running in 1971. Did some web surfing last night and found two photos of the flat cars used at some point for TOF service. That includes two dedicated BCRail group sites and a small number of private collections that are available on line. Probably a sign of dislike for the modern idea of intermodal.

On the other hand my other search topic was for log cars which found probably twice as many photos, just because the cars were hard to find. My photo collection has one empty log car, no intermodal cars, but a few trailers that were parked at North Van. Amazing what's out there. The J. Garden and Dale Sanders books are still very useful in comparison, and the photos posted here on TO.
I did score some decals though so we'll see what happens.
t4p.

Well, as they say, there ya go. Just found another book but I can't tell if it's on the market or not:

Monte Vista Publishing - British Columbia Railway to BC Rail (Volume One June 1984 thru 1987) (by Jeff Ainsworth and Brian Elchlepp) (SKU 1016-50001)
Available On: April 1, 2019

+ Found another series of books with a very similar name by Timithy Horton.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/29/19 21:22 by TCnR.

What a neat shot! See, now that you've used up your "10 Years Ago Today" material, I knew you'd have other gems to post. The trailers are great; the circus-style is evident, as is the fact that a box shape isn't aerodynamic no matter which was it faces.
Fred

I've always wondered about BC Rail's decision to get out of the trucking business. They had warehouses and ramps and so forth at various locations along the line.

I heard a political explanation years ago for the downsizing of services on BC Rail prior to the sale in 2004.

It goes way back to the Provincial Governments of WAC Bennett of the 1960's and 70's.

Apparently, Highways, BC Ferries and PGE/BCR were all included in the Ministry of Transport budget, and the cost for each mode of transport was not closely itemized. WAC would fly into a rage every time the opposition NDP would ask for an audit. Bennett's Government went down to defeat for one term after 1972, and during that time, an audit of transportation costs was made. Even though the Socreds returned to power for several Provincial Governments, the in depth audit continued to happen. The individual components of BC Rail came under scrutiny and in time the parts which cost the most were discontinued.