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Sidetracked on a Side Street

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The Pacific Great Eastern Railway, despite its name, was a Western company. Incorporated in Vancouver in 1912, it was founded to create a railroad between Prince George and the docks of North Vancouver via Squamish and the Howe Sound. Decades passed before this goal was fully achieved due to a section of challenging, mountainous terrain and ongoing financial challenges. It became known as the Province’s Great Expense to Prince George Eventually. However, the story of the PGE Railway is one of ambition and perseverance that created an important, historic route along the waters of the Burrard Inlet and Howe Sound, remnants of which still exist today.

Lonsdale Station

The North Vancouver PGE line opened in 1914 at the foot of Lonsdale where a one level, wooden railway terminus station had been built for the new passenger rail service between Lonsdale and Dundarave, that very soon extended to Whytecliff with 19 stops on the route. The station, like the line to Whytecliff, was a modest component of the ambitious and challenging design for a railroad to Squamish and way beyond to Prince George. Faced with financial problems, the PGE cancelled the short-lived passenger service in 1928. The station building was repurposed several times until 2014, when it was moved from the foot of Lonsdale to a temporary storage site. Ten years later, it remains sidetracked on a North Vancouver side street.

The 2024 location of the PGE Station at 449 Alder North Vancouver, where it has been sitting for 10 years! Photo courtesy of Colin Lawrence.

Opening Day

But on Saturday January 1, 1914, one hundred years before the Lonsdale station building was sidetracked, there was excitement in the air among the crowds of passengers and onlookers assembled at the little Lonsdale Station for, besides being New Year’s Day, it was the day of the PGE’s inaugural run from Lonsdale to Dundarave. 

The PGE Railway Station (Lonsdale Station) and train, just west of foot of Lonsdale Ave. on first day of operation January 1, 1914. Courtesy of MONOVA NV Archives, Inv # 10746.

As the train made its first run along the track to West Vancouver, the happy passengers were treated by the PGE officials to refreshments of sandwiches and cake; it was noted in the January 2, 1914 North Shore Press that “their wine was unexcelled”. However, the new service offered a convenient east–west travel corridor on the North Shore when there were few vehicles and even fewer roads. Just as today, the foot of Lonsdale was an important transportation hub with the ferry from Vancouver connecting with the North Vancouver streetcars and on that January day, the hub expanded to include train service to West Vancouver.

Official opening ceremonies of the PGE railway from Lonsdale to Dundarave, 25th St., January 1, 1914. Courtesy of West Vancouver Archives, Public Domain, Item Number 110. WVA.THO

Official opening of the PGE railway at Dundarave with John Lawson addressing the crowd, 1st January 1914. Courtesy of West Vancouver Archives, Public Domain Item Number0043.WVA.RAH

What to do with the Lonsdale Station?

While the Lonsdale Station building’s heyday as a PGE station was from 1914 to 1928, by the early 1970s the building had been used as a depot and as offices. In 1971, it was relocated from Lower Lonsdale to Mahon Park, where in 1972, it became the first home of the newly created Museum of North Vancouver that we know today as MONOVA.

North Shore Museum building, (formerly the PGE Station), Mahon Park in 1974. Courtesy of MONOVA NV Archives, Inv #384.

After the museum moved into Presentation House in 1976, the PGE station served as the museum’s annex but led a neglected existence until, in June 1997, it was moved from Mahon Park back to the foot of Lonsdale, close to where it started out and where the Polygon Gallery and Nemesis Coffee are located today. Finally, its future seemed safeguarded and after it was restored to its original design and colours, it was designated in 1998 by the City of North Vancouver as a Heritage Site and a class “A” building and received a Heritage B.C. Award of Honour for the restoration. The 2013 City of North Vancouver Heritage Register says, “Today, the PGE station continues to serve as a reminder of the transportation nexus that once existed at this location.” But its reprieve was short-lived, for in 2014, it was again moved, this time to make way for The Shipyards development. It was taken to 449 Alder Street where it still sits, like an abandoned railway car on a siding; surrounded by a padlocked fence and bramble bushes overlooking the grain elevators where Moodyville once thrived, waiting for the CNV politicians to find it a new home.

Restoration work of the PGE Station at foot of Lonsdale 1997-98. Courtesy of MONOVA NV Archives, Inv #14858.

Short-lived but Impressive Transportation Hub

So, why was the PGE’s Lonsdale Station’s life so short-lived at 14 years and why should it be important to us today as a heritage building? The ticket office was made redundant in 1928 for two main reasons.

1.    In 1928, the St Georges to Chesterfield Lonsdale Avenue subway tunnel opened. It was constructed in order to separate east- and west-bound freight trains from the north- and south-bound streetcar and vehicle routes, and to connect the PGE Railway with the 1925 Burrard Inlet rail-road bridge. (CN trains still use the tunnel daily, emerging at the foot of Chesterfield, often blocking vehicles and pedestrians on their way to and from the SeaBus and the pickup and drop off area). However the construction of this tunnel meant that the rail track now by-passed the Lonsdale Station building.

View of old Hotel North Vancouver to ferry wharf showing construction of Vancouver Harbour Commissioners Terminal Railway and tunnel under Lonsdale Ave. and Esplanade. 10 April 1928. Courtesy, MONOVA NV Archives, Inv #2326a.

2.     However, the other factor in reducing usage of the passenger railway was the increasing popularity of the road car over the rail car. The 1925 combination road and rail bridge at Burrard Inlet’s Second Narrows meant vehicles could now drive between Vancouver and North Vancouver and carry on to West Vancouver without using the train.

In 1918, because of financial problems the PGE Railway had been taken over by the B.C. Provincial Government. Then ten years later, in 1928, facing climbing costs and reduced ridership, the passenger service was cancelled but not before $140,000 was paid out to West Vancouver Municipality to help “pave the way” of new roads for the more popular automobile.

Small children playing by a Model T Ford at 17th Street and Argyle Avenue, 1921. The PGE Railway crossing is in the background. Courtesy, West Vancouver Archives, Public Domain Item Number 0728.WVA.RAH

When the passenger service was cancelled, North Vancouver lost a valuable component of an impressive transportation hub that is part of the North Shore’s story and development. In that context, the Lonsdale station building is a historic element of the past worth keeping. 

Historic Places Canada says that North Vancouver’s PGE 1914 Station “is valued as a rare surviving structure of the early railway era on the North Shore… and is significant as representing small- to medium-sized railway stations across the nation, typically side-gabled or hipped roof structures with bell cast eaves, supported by large triangular brackets, provided to shelter waiting passengers.” It added that the architect was Harold Cullerne, a Yorkshire man, who designed many structures throughout the lower mainland, including the Hollywood Theatre on West Broadway.

Original Purpose of the PGE Railway

However, the PGE’s main purpose had never been to run a local suburban passenger line but rather to connect Prince George to Vancouver in order to move lucrative raw lumber and other valuable raw materials to Vancouver’s port for profitable export. At the time of the PGE’s 1912 incorporation, the Howe Sound and Northern Railway Company (H.S.N.), who were taken over by the PGE in 1912, had started work on a line from Squamish to Pemberton. Survey work of the Cheakamus Canyon had already been undertaken by the engineering company Cleveland & Cameron and by 1914, enough track was in place to connect Squamish with Pemberton, with the idea that this expansion would enable inland passengers and freight to reach the coast. But until the mid 1950s, Squamish was the southern end of the interior rail line, and passengers and freight had to transfer to a ferry to continue to Vancouver. To see how this looked, I enthusiastically recommend you view Rails to Romance, a 1946 film produced by the B.C. Provincial Government about the PGE.

The ambitious PGE plan to develop the rail track from Whytecliff/Horseshoe Bay along the Howe Sound to Squamish, remained stalled until the PGE started work on the missing line link in 1954 with the support of the B.C. Provincial Government.

This was great news for commercial enterprises in the interior as they could now transport their goods directly to the Vancouver ports by train. However, since the 1928 cancellation of passenger service, the world had gone through years of international change including the financial crash of 1929, the ensuing Depression, WWII and the Korean War so it is understandable that many residents of West Vancouver had not considered, or expected, the return of an active railway line running through their community. It was an even greater shock for some West Vancouver residents to learn that land they had absorbed into their property was an encroachment of the PGE right-of-way that had to be surrendered!

The Howe Sound rail line officially opened on August 27, 1956. The road from Horseshoe Bay to Squamish opened the following year. With the Howe Sound rail connection between Horseshoe Bay and Squamish complete, the rail link from the coast to the interior of the Province had been accomplished. The alternative PGE acronym, Prince George Eventually, had become a reality.  

 Accidents

In addition to the Lonsdale station on Alder Street, other remnants of the PGE Railway still exist. The Seaview Trail in West Vancouver is a popular and easy 1.2 mile walk with stunning views of Eagle Harbour and beyond to West Point Grey, but the trail started life as a section of the PGE train track from North Vancouver to Whytecliff. That section of the track is now bypassed by a tunnel constructed following a dramatic derailment above Eagle Harbour on Saturday February 19, 1972. On that day, at 6:30 AM, neighbourhood residents for many blocks were awakened by the loud and ominous screeching and crashing of metal-on-metal as twenty-four cars of a 75-car freight train heading south, derailed on a sharp bend of the track. Three lumber-laden cars careened down the steep slope to Marine Drive, causing major damage to hillside homes.

PGE 1972 derailment Fisherman’s Cove, Courtesy, West Vancouver Archives, Copyright ownership is undetermined. Item number 2201.WVA.PHO

It was a miracle that there were no injuries or deaths, but it was a close call. Just a half hour before the calamity, a baby, in what became the most damaged house, had awoken and been picked up by the mother and taken to another part of the house. The baby’s bedroom was demolished. 

However. this was not the only accident involving the PGE railway. The first accident happened on the passenger line on January 2nd, 1914 - day two of the service - with a derailment at 24th Street in Dundarave.

PGE train derailment 2nd January 1914, the day after inaugural run. Courtesy of MONOVA NV Archives, Inv# 5138

And on September 4th, 1916 (Labour Day), extra trains had been put in service to accommodate the holiday crowds, many of whom had travelled from Vancouver on the Lonsdale ferry to connect with a train for a day trip to Whytecliff and Horseshoe Bay, a popular outing destination.

PGE Station at Whytecliffe 1920. Two boys on bench are Reg and Wes Brind. Courtesy of MONOVA NV Archives, Inv # 2862

The North Shore Press Fri, Aug 14, 1925. Courtesy of newspapers.com

After a routine passenger pick up at Dundarave, locomotive #2 continued west, but it seems the crew had lost count of returning trains, an error that resulted in a calamitous head-on crash with one of the eastbound trains. Many passengers were injured, some seriously. There was no road access to Whytecliff and with the line completely blocked, the large crowd who had arrived at Whytecliff on earlier trains was now marooned. The Bowena, a Union Steamship boat, was called out to ship almost 2000 people back to North Vancouver.

Labour Day derailment 4th September 1916, Courtesy, West Vancouver Archives, Public Domain Item number 094. WVA.THO

 North Shore PGE Station Stops

The western access to the Seaview Trail is near where the Larson and Whytecliff Stations once stood. The distance between the Lonsdale Station ticket office and Whytecliff was about 13 miles, with 19 station stops.

Map of the PGE Railway Stops in North and West Vancouver. Patrick O. Hind’s The Pacific Great Eastern Railway Company: a short history of the North Shore subdivision, 1914-1928. Courtesy of MONOVA/North Vancouver Archives.

Most of the stop names are familiar to North Shore residents such as Caulfeild, West Bay, Dundarave and Ambleside, but Weston, Sherman, Kew, Anchorage and Larson less so.

Larson Station had a direct connection with North Vancouver and the Lonsdale Station. Peter Larson, a Swedish sailor who had jumped ship in Victoria, opened the impressive Hotel North Vancouver on West Esplanade in 1902. Larson is a familiar name in North Vancouver with Larson Road, Larson School and in West Vancouver Larson Bay. Larson’s hotel kitchen was supplied with fruit, vegetables and dairy from the farm/ranch he established at Larson Bay where the Gleneagles golf course and the Orchard restaurant are now and where part of the original orchard still stands. The previous restaurant at Gleneagles was called Larson Station. Initially, the ranch was reached by boat access only, but in 1914, Larson saw a better way. He sold 11 acres of his 223-acre property to facilitate the new train line for the Pacific Great Eastern Railway, which in return put in Larson Station enabling a reliable means of transporting produce to his North Vancouver hotel conveniently situated just steps away from the Lonsdale PGE station, the station that today languishes on Alder Street.

The Future of the Lonsdale PGE Station

Larson’s Hotel North Vancouver was on Esplanade where the IGA and Shoppers Drug Mart are located. The PGE Railway station once stood nearby, close to the new MONOVA location and Waterfront Park. The train tracks that run through the park arrive there by the 1928 tunnel that put the station out of business. How fitting it would be if the little railway station could be rescued from obscurity and returned home to Lower Lonsdale to once again be recognized and valued as a significant building from the North Shore’s past.

FUN FACTS:

  • The passenger line used both steam locomotive and gas rail cars. PGE bought the only 4 gas rail cars ever to operate in Canada. They were made by a Californian Company, Hall-Scott of Berkely.

  • The passenger service between Squamish and Quesnel offered some amazing destinations for city folk and tourists alike.

The North Shore Press Fri, Aug 23, 1929. Courtesy of newspapers.com

The North Shore Press Fri, Jul 14, 1933. Courtesy of newspapers.com

Credits and Sources

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