Island Rail Corridor

The Island Rail Corridor, also known by its former name Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway (E&N Railway), is a railway located on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. It is owned by the Island Corridor Foundation and has two corridors. The Victoria Subdivision runs from Victoria to Courtenay and the Port Alberni Subdivision which runs from Parksville to Port Alberni. The railway stopped passenger traffic in 2011 because of poor track conditions and the cost of maintaining it.

History

After the colony of Vancouver Island joined the colony of British Columbia and then Canadian Confederation, they were promised a railway that connected Victoria to the main trainline of Canada and for construction to begin within two years with a finishing date within ten years. Premier Amor De Cosmos proposed that the rail travel through the Yellowhead Pass in the Canadian Rockies and reach the coast of British Columbia at Bute Inlet and then extend to Vancouver Island from a bridge on the Seymour Narrows before reaching its terminus at the Royal Navy HMC Dockyard base in Esquimalt. The proposal was approved on June 7, 1873 with work starting after.

Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie was not convinced about the terminus being placed in Esquimalt, saying it was too expensive to operate and argued that steamships had already connected people from the island to the mainland of British Columbia. Tensions between the province and federal government began to rise after the future of the railway became uncertain. In 1874, Premier George Anthony Walkem demanded that the railway extension be finished and threatened to withdraw British Columbia from confederation if his demand was not met. An arbitrator ruled more time to be given for the railway's extension and that the line must be between Esquimalt and Nanaimo. Although the arbitrator ruled in favour of the extension, the vote failed in the Canadian Senate. This failed vote infuriated British Columbians and they threatened to leave confederation again.

After Prime Minister John A. Macdonald returned to power, he stood in the House of Commons and condemned the politicians that failed to meet the conditions for British Columbia's confederation and demanded that the railway be built. In the 1880s, the Canadian Pacific Railway terminated on the mainland of Vancouver. The plan of having the railway be a trans-continental expansion were scrapped in favour of a smaller regional line between Esquimalt and Nanaimo instead. Businessman Robert Dunsmuir was awarded the railway in 1883 and was given a land grant of 800,000 acres and $750,000 which he expanded later on to include Southeast Vancouver Island. Construction on the railway began in April 1884. On August 13, 1886, Prime Minister MacDonald drove the last spike of the railway into the ground at Cliffside in Shawnigan Lake and the railway was completed. After the railway was completed, it continued to be privately owned by E&N Railway. It was mainly used for transport and for the coal and lumber industries, as well as, the Royal Navy HMC Dockyard Esquimalt base.

Dunsmuir later extended the railway to Wellington where his coal plant was located. In 1888, the line was extended from Esquimalt to Victoria. After Dunsmuir died in 1889, the control of E&N Railway was given to his son James Dunsmuir who took over. Different competing railways started to emerge throughout the years. In 1894, the Victoria & Sidney Railway was created to link the city of Victoria with the town of Sidney. In 1902, the V&S Railway was sold to Victoria Terminal Railway and Ferry Company, which was controlled by the Great Northern Railway.

In 1905, Dunsmuir sold the E&N Railway to the Canadian Pacific Railway for $1 million and the rest of the land grants for $1.25 million. After CPR took over ownership, they made changes to improve the railway. They improved the track along the Malahat by replacing the wooden trestles with soil so that it was able to hold more weight. This was not able to be done everywhere along the track however. CPR built the Arbutus Canyon and Niagara Creek Canyon trestle bridges so the trains were able to cross. The bridge was later replaced with a cantilever bridge which was one of the Cisco Bridges. The Cisco bridge was dismantled in 1911 because it was not able to meet the weight limit of the increasing demand. After it was broken down, it was shipped to Vancouver and was used to replace the trestle bridge over Niagara Creek Canyon. In 1912, the track was extended to reach Port Alberni. The next year, it was extended to Lake Cowichan. Lumber companies started to make their own competing railways to haul their lumber and more track started to be built across the island. Notable railways that were created include the Englewood Railway, which ran until November 7, 2017 when it closed after a deadly derailment months earlier. In 1914, CPR expanded the E&N railway to Courtenay. In 1916, Canadian Northern Pacific Railway built a railway towards Sooke and another line from Victoria to Patricia Bay to compete with E&N and Victoria and Sidney Railway. In 1918, the Canadian Northern Pacific Railway was taken over by Canadian National Railway on Vancouver Island. The next year, the Victoria and Sidney Railway shutdown and its line was bought by CN. In 1924, CN expanded the track towards Lake Cowichan and had planned to also extend it towards Port Alberni but it never ended up being built. The decline of coal and trucks transporting lumber and other goods faster than train caused CN to pull out of Vancouver Island and the route from Victoria to Sooke later being turned into the Galloping Goose Regional Trail.

In 1978, CN transferred its passenger operations to Via Rail. Via Rail ran a line from Victoria to Courtenay with a Budd car called the Malahat Dayliner which ran from 1979 until March 19, 2011.

On September 23, 1998, RailAmerica purchased CPR's Port Alberni line and took over operations of the rest of the mainline under a lease from CPR. Fright traffic for rail kept falling and CPR donated its Victoria to Courtenay railway corridor to the Island Corridor Foundation in February 2006. The next month on March 24, RailAmerica donated its Port Alberni to Nanaimo corridor to the foundation as well. This formed the Island Rail Corridor and they chose Southern Railway of British Columbia to haul freight on the island.