STAY CONNECTED TO VIBRANTVICTORIA
WHAT'S HAPPENING ON CITIFIED VICTORIA
Most Victorians, even most Vancouver Islanders, are probably not aware that the E&N Railway is not the only railway on Vancouver Island. Currently only a small section of the E&N in the Nanaimo area has trains operating.
But if you travel north to the town of Woss, 400 kilometres north of Victoria, you'll come upon ...a railroad fan's delight.
This "active" railway crossing sign in Woss is your first clue that you better look left and right before crossing ...railroad tracks?
...and things get zanier from there on in. I had the opportunity to check out the railroad operations and learn about the line last weekend, and here is a video of the Englewood Railway, the last logging railroad in North America.
Video
Englewood Railway
The line runs nearly 100 kilometres from logging operations south of Woss to a large yard in Beaver Cove on the east coast of Vancouver Island. It's actually right next to Telegraph Cove, which when I checked it out was absolutely chock full of tourists. It's a cute and quaint little place that I highly recommend you visit if you get the chance.
There's a passing-off yard north of Woss where a single locomotive pulling full loads from the logging operations meets with two locomotives that deliver empty loads from Beaver Cove and pull full loads north. This is where I observed a lot of the railway action which you'll see in the video and in the photos below.
From the passing-off point the train heads to Beaver Cove where logs are dumped into the ocean and prepared for delivery to shipping ports or over to the Lower Mainland, etc.
A service yard is situated about 15 minutes north of Woss along Nimpkish Lake, the huge north-south lake between Woss and Port McNeill. There crews will service the locomotives and the cars, which total 400.
The operation will delivery some 22,000 car loads of tress annually, although the output can fluctuate. Today two or three train loads are pulled into Beaver Cove on a daily basis.
The line is not connected to the E&N.
Below are photos of two locomotives awaiting delivery of fully loaded cars that they'll take to Beaver Cove. This passing-off yard is located north of Woss.
History
The Englewood Railway started operations in 1917 and will celebrate 100 years of operations next year. Take that, E&N. Originally the line was powered by steam locomotives such as the 2-8-2 you'll see in the video. The train is fully restored and is on display in the town of Woss. Once-upon-a-time the steam locomotive was actually used as a tourist train but that's no longer the case.
Currently four 1950's era former "switcher" locomotives power the line, with three in regular service and one on stand-by. The locomotives were converted to "road" operations, which means they were built up to handle railroad operations as opposed to operations within switching yards.
The line is operated seven days a week.
This 2-8-2 steam locomotive is on display in Woss, where a small train yard along Railway Avenue handles some operations although it appeared unused when I visited the yard.
