What can be done? wrote a 1982 caller to The Creek newspaper.
About the night trains. Two per night. Blowing whistles at 3 in the morning.
The Creek answered with a column, Night Train Nuisance, and informed sleep-deprived Creekers that then City Councillor and Kerrisdale resident George Puil was being equally roused and was insisting the City of Vancouver put the exact same question to BC Hydro Rail.
Two rail lines run along the edges of False Creek. BC Hydro Rail had long leased the north-south line from the CPR. Began in 1902, the Sockeye Limited, connected Vancouver to Steveston’s fishing industry. It ran from the north end of the Granville Bridge over the Kitsilano Trestle, with a stop at Millside on 4th Avenue, then onward towards Marpole and beyond. In 1905, the BC Electric Company (precursor to BC Hydro) took on the line’s lease, continuing to run freight trains and adding a passenger interurban service. By the 50s, the ubiquity of automobiles ended the Interurban system in Vancouver but freight trains continued to lumber along, serving industries like the Carling O’Keefe and Molson breweries until 2001, when Carling O’Keefe was gone and Molson’s stopped receiving cargo by rail. With the line now dormant, community gardens, walkers and bikers took over the right-of-way. Years of wrangling with the CPR finally produced a 2006 agreement whereby the City of Vancouver purchased the line. Part of it is now the Arbutus Greenway.
A second line, always just a freight line, which the City had already purchased in the late 1990’s, runs east-west along the edge of False Creek South, from Granville Island to the Cambie Bridge along 6th Avenue. Luckily for today’s residents, trains no longer trundle this route, blocking traffic trying to get in and out of the neighbourhood. During the 2010 Winter Olympics, a demonstration streetcar on loan from Brussels used the line to run from Granville Island to the Olympic Village Canada Line station.
Before then and for a few years after, the line also hosted an occasional historic tram, operating as the Vancouver Downtown Historic Railway. The City is now considering using this track for a revitalized interurban streetcar system, although according to resident Graham McGarva, whose architectural firm did a study on the line for the City, the track would need upgrading to meet standards suitable to major long term transportation.
Hopefully any option the City comes up with will not be blasting a horn at 2 in the morning.
– Kathryn Woodward (Market Hill)