The Vancouver Downtown Historic Railway is a heritage streetcar line that operates between Granville Island and the Cambie Station (north of 6th Ave just east of Ash Street) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It operates only on weekends and holidays, usually from May to mid-October, and is aimed primarily at tourists. Two restored interurban streetcars are used on the line, which used a former freight railway right-of-way.
The line is owned by the City of Vancouver. The cars are operated by volunteers from the Transit Museum Society. The car shown (1207) is privately owned.
Service was inaugurated on July 29, 1998, and was considered to be a demonstration project for a modern downtown streetcar system that the city plans to develop. It continued to operate almost every summer since then, as an excursion-oriented historic streetcar line. However, as of summer 2012, service has been suspended indefinitely due to financial constraints.
When last fully operational, the line ran from Granville Island to a stop near Science World and Main Street-Science World SkyTrain station. Since then, however, Olympic related construction has razed sections of the line east of the Olympic Village Canada Line Station. The proposal for a modern line would extend the former line through Chinatown and Gastown to Waterfront Station, and eventually to Stanley Park. There would be a separate line into Yaletown with longer term potential for a number of other lines.
Read more about Vancouver Downtown Historic Railway: Vancouver 2010 Olympic Line, Fleet of Railcars
Famous quotes containing the words historic and/or railway:
“The first farmer was the first man, and all historic nobility rests on possession and use of land.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)