Railway Department
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Railway Department PROVINCE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA ANNUAL REPORT Year Ended December 31st 1953 VICTORIA, B.C. Printed by DON MCDIARMID, Printer to the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty 1954 To His Honour CLARENCE WALLACE, C.B.E., Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of British Columbia. MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HONOUR: I have the honour to present herewith the Annual Report of the operations and activities of the Railway Department for the year ended December 31st, 1953. W. R. T. CHETWYND, Minister of Railways. Victoria, B.C., February 12th, 1954. VICTORIA, B.C., December 31st, 1953. The Honourable W. R. T. Chetwynd, Minister of Railways, Victoria, B.C. SIR,—I beg to submit herewith the Thirty-sixth Annual Report of the Railway Department, covering the year 1953, together with Appendices. Your obedient servant, J. S. BROADBENT, Assistant Deputy Minister. Report of the Railway Department FOREWORD It is a recognized rule in human evolution that civilization progresses in accordance with improvements in overland transportation. It was a little over a century ago that the first pioneer coal-miners landed in a wilderness at a place on Vancouver Island known to-day as Nanaimo. Coal had been discovered, and, as a new age in transportation was dawning, coal was needed to fuel the ships and supply power for the new railways and cities which were creating a new civilization in the Golden West of North America. In those early days the only land transportation in British Columbia was by horse and wagon, but, as it was necessary to move the coal from inland mines to tide-water, small steam-locomotives were imported from England and little railways sprang up around Nanaimo and Wellington on Vancouver Island. These were the first railways in British Columbia. In 1883 Robert Dunsmuir, by a special Act, incorporated the Welling ton Colliery Railway, and in the same year an Act was passed to authorize the building of the Island Railway from Nanaimo to Victoria. This railway, which was to become the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway, was under construction before the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed into Vancouver in 1886. From that time onward, as the railways progressed, civilization followed the newly opened avenues of potential growth; however, in the early 1920's civilization progressed to a point where the railways and methods of railroading lagged behind the demands of civilization, and man, of necessity, invented improved methods of transportation to carry his civilization to greater heights. Transportation on air-inflated rubber tires became the public demand, and the air- inflated rubber tire was the key to success of the motor-car. In turn the motor-car was improved and reduced in price so that by 1925 the working class owned 90 per cent of all the motor-cars in the United States and Canada. Soon the roads became inadequate as the motor-car demanded better roads. As roads were improved, better motor-cars were built to run upon them until, where in 1914 the speed-limit on some roads was 8 to 15 miles per hour, the speed of traffic increased by 1930 up to 60 and 70 miles per hour. In fact, transportation on rubber tires progressed to the point that during the early thirties the railway companies woke up to find the new methods were seriously affecting the business of their railways. They introduced diesels and better equipment, but the motor car and its big brothers, the truck and bus, were firmly entrenched, in fact so much so that by 1950 some of the logging companies were using rubber-tired logging-trucks. Private roads were being built into the wilderness for the transport of logs and raw materials. The new type of motor-trucks could negotiate heavier grades, and improved braking systems were required. Air-brakes were applied to these 60-ton vehicles in order to control them safely. Motor-trucks hauling logs and other material moved on to public roads hauling the heavy commodities which formerly were hauled on the railways. In the cities the public demand for transportation on rubber tires reached the point where street-railways were taken up, and in the place of street-cars rubber-tired trolley buses operated on the streets by power from overhead trolley-wires. These vehicles were not required to carry licence-plates of any kind either under the " Motor-vehicle Act" or the Public Utilities Commission. They were and still are operated under the Street Rail- waymen's Union, although a Class A chauffeur's licence is required to drive them. JI 6 BRITISH COLUMBIA A new era of transportation had come into being. Newly accepted standards became commonplace. Logging and construction companies now flew their personnel into the camps by aeroplane. Some companies procured helicopters for the construction of transmission-lines, hauling loads of 2,000 pounds over glaciers and mountain ranges. Aerial tramways were constructed to inaccessible places. When oil was discovered on the Prairies, pipe-lines were constructed to transport oil to the Great Lakes and also to the Pacific Seaboard in British Columbia. Thirty years before, a railroad traffic man was considered to be a transportation expert, but not so in the new order of things: the railroad still had its place hauling long cross-country hauls and also hauling heavy commodities where railway already existed; the aeroplane had its place where fast transportation was required or where no road of any kind existed or was possible; the truck and bus running on public and private roads and on city streets had also their place in the new order of things, as well as did local and transcontinental pipe-lines in transporting crude oil and natural gas. To-day the four major types of land transportation operate competitively with each other, and each must recognize the other as a necessary part of our present-day economy. On a National basis all four types of transportation are controlled by the Board of Transport Commissioners, but in British Columbia transportation solely within the Province operating under Provincial jurisdiction is controlled by the Provincial Railway Department. About twenty years ago the Federal Government recognized new types of transpor tation other than railways and the name of " Board of Railway Commissioners," and all types of transportation other than that under Provincial jurisdiction were controlled by the Federal Board of Transport. The Railway Department recognized new methods of transportation which were to be assisted rather than hindered. Logging companies, which had always had the Depart ment's assistance on technical matters, called the Department in to help them in their trucking and other transportation problems. As a result, improved braking systems were developed for logging-trucks, improved underground hoisting safety devices were recom mended on the Alcan project, and improved safety devices were used on aerial tramways. Truck-drivers on private roads were examined and certified, and this service is now being extended to the public roads, in which respect public lectures and training courses are being conducted by the Department in the hope of increasing public safety. In view of the trend of the times regarding new methods of transportation in addition to railways, the time is at hand when the name of the Department could be changed to the " Department of Transport," which would be in keeping with changes already made along the same line by the Federal Government. THE HISTORY OF A RAILWAY (Compiled by R. E. Swanson, Chief Inspector) The Railway Department in British Columbia came into existence in 1911 to take care of existing railways and also to administer the railway expansion and railway- building programme that was booming during the years prior to World War I, which event ended the great railway speculative booms that had flared up in the West ever since the building of the first transcontinental railway. Some of the railways incorporated in those years are still operating and serving the present-day economy of the country, but many of them were fantastic schemes which never materialized. The history and statistics of those early railways and schemes to build industrial empires are preserved in the files of the Railway Department; but what about some of the earlier railways in existence before such records were kept? It is, therefore, the intention of this short article to pre serve the history and statistics of one of the early narrow-gauge railways which ushered RAILWAY DEPARTMENT, 1953 JJ 7 in wide gauge on Vancouver Island before the transcontinental railways reached the shores of the Pacific. Historical records show that sometime during the year 1869 Robert Dunsmuir, who was a Scottish mining engineer for the Vancouver Coal Company, which operated the Nanaimo coal mines, discovered the Wellington coal-seam 5 miles north of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. It is said, while on a hunting-trip, Dunsmuir discovered the seam quite by accident where a windfall had exposed the seam, and he and his partner, W. Diggle, immediately set to work to acquire the property and develop it under the name of Dunsmuir, Diggle & Company, which was in 1883 changed to R. Dunsmuir & Sons and later changed to Canadian Collieries (Dunsmuir) Limited. The first shipments of coal from the Wellington seam were transported to Departure Bay by horse and cart, but as production increased a tramway employing wooden rails was constructed from Wellington to Departure Bay and mules supplied the motive power. In time the wooden rails were replaced with iron rails imported from England, and Duns muir obtained a small " dinky " or construction locomotive to replace the mules. By 1883 the Wellington seam had developed to such proportions that five shafts were in operation, working three shifts, and the original railway became inadequate.