Budd cars in BC

[Twin Star Rocket]

I rode BCR just once in September 1979. I had made a trip on the WP&Y and had flown from Whitehorse to Prince George on Canadian Pacific Airlines. After spending a day seeing Prince George, I caught the morning Budd car train southbound. Seems like there were three, maybe four, RDCs in the train. One perk was breakfast served from a small galley by a young lady attendant .

Beautiful country: forests, deep canyons, mighty rivers, and the coastal lakes and fjords. It was a long day, but a pleasant one.

Now that I think about it I did ride BC Rail one more time a few years later: the Royal Hudson excursion to Squamish and back!

I also rode VIA's RDC on Vancouver Island in the 80s. Also a scenic trip. If I recall, I rode northbound all the way to the end--Courtenay? Then came back as far as Nanaimo and walked to the ferry landing to catch CP's last ferry in BC service, the PRINCESS of VANCOUVER. A couple of nights earlier I dined on the PRINCESS MARY in Victoria. That was a restaurant made from the superstructure of the CP coastal ferry of the same name that had been set on land. It's gone now.

 

[CHamilton]

I did BC Rail from N. Vancouver to Lillooet in 2001 or so. It was a beautiful ride, and we had a couple of hours to walk around Lillooet in the middle of the day. I then got into a fascinating discussion with a couple -- he was the editorial page editor of the Vancouver Sun -- and we were so busy talking that we missed seeing the train pull out. The folks in the station got the train to stop, and put us in a van to catch up with it maybe half a mile away. Talk about service

Those Budd RDCs were, I believe, sold to Oregon for the special runs they did between Portland (actually Linwood) and Astoria in the summers of 2003-4 in honor of the Lewis & Clark bicentennial. It took three hours for the 90-mile run, because the track was very slow, and the crew had to get off at a couple of places and hand-crank a couple of bridges. The story was told that they got stuck one day when the conductor forgot the key! But the slow movement meant we had time to eat the boxed lunches provided. And we got a big welcome in Astoria, where the Chamber of Commerce met the train, and pointed us to the various attractions. They had buses scheduled to go up the big tower on the hill outside of town, and one could ride the waterfront streetcar which was run by volunteers -- the conductor the day I rode it was the town dentist.

I also did the Vancouver Island VIA RDC train, called the Malahat, from Victoria to Courtenay, in 2009 or 10. It also had wonderful scenery, and was packed with kids going to a camp for Sea Scouts. They were all dressed up in their uniforms, looking rather like something out of Gilbert & Sullivan. This train is listed as being "temporarily" replaced with a bus, but the last I heard, even the bus was being discontinued. Sound familiar?