Portal:Transport/Selected article/Week 32, 2008
BC Rail (AAR reporting marks BCOL and BCIT), known as the British Columbia Railway between 1972 and 1984 and as the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE; AAR reporting marks PGE and PGER) before 1972, was a railway that operated in the Canadian province of British Columbia between 1912 and 2004. It was a class II regional railway and the third-largest in Canada, operating 2 320 km (1,441 miles) of mainline track. It was owned by the provincial government from 1918 until 2004, when the operations were sold to the Canadian National Railway. The details of the sale have become the subject of protracted public inquiry as part of the proceedings of the trial surrounding a scandal known as the British Columbia Legislature Raids Affair, or "Railgate". Chartered in 1912, the railway was acquired by the provincial government in 1918 after running into financial difficulties. A railway that ran "from nowhere, to nowhere" for over 30 years, neither passing through any major city nor interchanging with any other railway, its southern terminus was at Squamish and its northern terminus at Clinton during that period. It expanded significantly between 1949 and 1984. Primarily a freight railway, it also offered passenger service, as well as some excursion services, most notably the Royal Hudson excursion train. The railway's operations were not always profitable, and its debts, at times, made it the center of political controversy.
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