Vancouver Downtown Historic Railway
| Vancouver Downtown Historic Railway | |||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tram car 1207
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| Overview | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Type | Heritage streetcar, seasonal | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Status | Service indefinitely suspended | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Operation | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Opened | July 29, 1998 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Closed | Fall 2011 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Operator(s) | Transit Museum Society | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technical | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Track gauge | 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Old gauge | 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Electrification | 600 V DC | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Vancouver Downtown Historic Railway was a heritage electric railway line that operated from 1998 to 2011 between Granville Island and Olympic Village Station (north of 6th Ave just east of Ash Street) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It operated only on weekends and holidays, usually from May to mid-October, and was aimed primarily at tourists. Two restored interurban trams were used on the line, which used a former freight railway right-of-way.
The line was owned by the City of Vancouver. The cars were operated by volunteers from the Transit Museum Society. The car shown (1207) was privately owned. In January 2016, 1207 was donated and moved to the Fraser Valley Historical Railway in Cloverdale, BC.
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 through 2011, as an excursion-oriented historic electric railway line. In 2010, the heritage service did not operate, because the line was used for a modern-streetcar demonstration service known as the "Olympic Line" (see section below), and temporary modifications made to the line's overhead wire for that operation took longer than expected to undo, also delaying the start of 2011 service. The 2011 season began on July 1 and was scheduled to run until mid-October. The line did not operate in 2012, with service suspended indefinitely due to financial constraints, and there are no set plans to resume operation. Further, a Vancouver City Council report published in March 2014 recommended against ever reviving service on the heritage line.
When last fully operational, the line ran from Granville Island to a stop near Science World and SkyTrain's Main Street-Science World Station. Since then, however, Olympics-related construction has razed sections of the line east of SkyTrain's Olympic Village Station on the Canada Line.
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