Train travel was popular for most of the last century. The rise of the car, freeways, affordable air travel and an increasingly fast-paced world changed all that.
Now, trains tend to attract either nostalgic visitors or well-heeled folks eager to glimpse awe-inspiring 180-degree views from Rocky Mountaineer’s domed railcars.
West Coast Railway Association CEO Don Evans plans to attract those demographics among others on October 2, when his Royal Hudson #2860 makes its first scheduled public trip between North Vancouver and Squamish in 11 years.
That steam-powered train was a B.C. tourism icon until mounting losses forced the B.C. government to decommission it in 1999.
Victoria had been paying CP Rail to operate the train as a way to attract tourists.
Steam-powered trains, however, are pricier to operate than the diesel-electric locomotives that Rocky Mountaineer and Via Rail operate. The Royal Hudson burns oil to create the steam that moves engine pistons.
When the Royal Hudson was running at the end of the 1990s, CP Rail was charging $49 per round-trip even though the cost to operate the train was twice that amount, Evans said. “It’s poetry in motion. I call it a symphony of steam.”
Indeed, the Royal Hudson arrives amid billowing steam that evaporates into the air after wafting from its engine’s smoke stack.
Evans’ society teamed up with the District of Squamish in 2002 to sign a joint 30-year lease with the B.C. government to operate the Royal Hudson for a nominal sum.
A fundraising campaign generated $750,000 to restore what is now a 70-year-old train.
Since September 2006, the Royal Hudson has made a few trips each year, including steaming out to White Rock for that community’s 50th birthday in 2007. It also powered its way to Cloverdale and the Fraser Valley last year.
It has steamed along its classic route between North Vancouver and Squamish a few times since its restoration but not with paid passengers aboard.
“A private company could never make money doing this,” Evans said. “Running a steam engine is so expensive today that you could not do it on a regular basis and recover your costs. That’s why we’re running it as a special event machine.”
The plan is for the Royal Hudson to travel between North Vancouver and Squamish carrying passengers who pay $125 for a one-way trip. Passengers then take a chartered bus back to their starting point. The train will return without paid passengers back to the West Coast Railway Heritage Park in Squamish, where it is is housed .
Evans refers to the October 2 trip as a fundraiser even though the paying customers do not get a tax receipt.
The Rocky Mountaineer also had its origins in a money-losing passenger train.
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney slashed Via Rail’s budget in 1989 forcing the company to sell its troubled tourist-oriented run through the Rocky Mountains.
Subsidizing tourists was deemed to be outside Via Rail’s core mandate so the Crown corporation sold the money-losing run to Peter Armstrong, who generated a nominal $3 million in his inaugural 1990 season.
Rocky Mountaineer’s runs operate during the day only, allowing passengers to sleep comfortably in hotel rooms.
Via Rail’s Toronto-to-Vancouver run travels through Edmonton and does not stop for the night as Rocky Mountaineer’s trains do.
Via’s other two B.C. trips are:
- a Jasper-to-Prince Rupert service three times a week year-round; and
- a Victoria-to-Courtenay service that operates daily year-round.
“Ours is a world-class product,” Rocky Mountaineer CEO Randy Powell told Business in Vancouver earlier this summer.
Powell’s railway has won four World Travel Awards naming it the “world’s leading travel experience by train.”
National Geographic magazine also named Rocky Mountaineer, which is the largest privately owned passenger rail service in North America, one of the “World’s Greatest Trips.”
The company generates hundreds of millions of dollars each year and employs about 600 staff in its season, which runs from April to October.