Surrey’s Heritage Rail is back on track for spring and summer trips from Cloverdale to Sullivan Station and back.
Fraser Valley Heritage Railway Society’s attraction began operating for the season on May 4, with rides continuing until the end of September.
Hour-long adventures aboard the restored B.C. Electric Railway interurban car 1225 run Saturday and Sunday only, with no service on stat-holiday Mondays.
Five round-trips are operated daily from the station in Cloverdale, located at Highway 10 and 176A St., to the Sullivan stop, with the first trip made at 10 a.m. and the last at 3 p.m.
Adult fare is $20, seniors and students $15, children between 2 and 11 are $10 and children under two are free. Book online at fvhrs.org/ticket-info, or call 604-574-9056 for details.
Also, for an additional fee, “Speeder” and “Velocipede” rides are offered, along with tours of a discovery centre.
Some history: BCER 1225 worked in Vancouver, Steveston and Burnaby from 1913 until Feb. 28, 1958, according to a post on the society’s website.
“In early 1950s, as the BCER was being wound down, many of the cars were decommissioned. Most ended up being burnt at the rail yard under the Burrard St. bridge. Some were purchased and moved to museums south of the border.”
BCER 1225 found its way to the Orange Empire Railway Museum (OERM) in Perris, California. There, the car was part of the rolling stock at OREM prior to 2005, when it returned home to Canada. A celebration event was held at the Cloverdale station in September of that year, with a ribbon-cutting and more.
• RELATED STORY: Surrey artists ‘Paint the Train’ in inaugural celebration of heritage rail, from September 2018.
Last fall, winners of the first-annual Paint the Train competition were revealed at an artist reception at Newton Cultural Centre. The contest was created by the Fraser Valley Heritage Railway Society in partnership with the Arts Council of Surrey.
The contest was organized to see who could paint the best picture of a train, or, as it turned out, represent the history of the B.C. interurban railroad through any art medium — entries included fibre art, photography, and even a model made of LEGO.
Colin Pronger took first place in the competition with his acrylic painting, “River Bend,” featuring two people by a riverbank looking on as the Chilliwack interurban travels through the Fraser Valley. Jun Zhao took second place for “On The Rail,” a work done in pencil and pen, and third place went to Elizabeth Aubert for a piece of fibre art, “Flowers at the Station.”
with a file from Samantha Anderson