Vancouver Island Railroads
Robert D. Turner

Second Edition. Featuring over 250 outstanding colour and black & white photographs, maps and illustrations in a new, expanded edition. Complete with a detailed index and bibliography. Rugged and beautiful, Vancouver Island is the setting for an outstanding gallery of railroad photography and history. The Canadian Pacific's Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway, a Canadian National branch line, an electric street railway and interurban system, vintage coal mining lines including narrow gauge operations, and dozens of fascinating logging railways are an unbeatable combination of western railroading. Highlights feature spectacular bridges and trestles, specialized equipment, and classic steam and diesel locomotives with a backdrop of the Island's beautiful forests. Concise histories and stunning photos provide a captivating and informative journey from the 1860s through the 1990s. Vancouver Island Railroads was first released in 1973. This beautiful, substantially expanded and updated edition, with a new chapter and many new colour photo sections, brings the story of railroading on Vancouver Island into the late 1990s. Railway/History, 186 pp, 8½ × 11, 250+ photos and maps ISBN 1-55039-077-5, paper, $34.95 IBSN 1-55039-083-X, cloth special limited edition, $55.00

Book Review

VANCOUVER ISLAND Railroads is a detailed history packed with failures and successes of mining, logging and passenger rail companies.

Author Robert Turner, in this updated edition, fills readers in on the almost 140 years of growth: trestles, tracks and spectacular bridges are wound along coastal cliffs and lowlands, up into hills and valleys, even on city streets. These tracks have woven themselves into a historical fabric covering details and insight on industry and settlements up and down the Island.

Stories that have gathered along the rails are retold – stories of boom and bust for dozens of companies and towns, accounts of runaway trains, derailments and tragic accidents. Photographs (many by the author) appearing throughout the book are spectacular, and the numerous maps are great for reference.

The book also serves as a reference for the Dunsmuir family's incredible mining successes. The author admirably chronicles the deluge of workers and details of land swaps, castle building, land exploration and explosions:

"After the mining accident, a list of victims was published... . This list, in giving the sad results of the gas explosion in the No. 5 Mine, also revealed the differing status of the white and Chinese workers. While the whites were listed by their full names, the Chinese miners were listed by numbers assigned to them ... .

"So anxious were the Chinese immigrants to find employment that if one man left the mines because of sickness, injury or death, his position was immediately taken by another, who assumed the former's name and number."

It was a time when rail was king, before cars or logging trucks. On the Saanich Peninsula alone, three separate rail systems snaked from downtown to the northern communities and docks. By 1912, Victoria was bustling with streetcars, and nearly 11 million fares were collected in that year.

The book oozes with minute details, interesting stuff for even the general reader. But railway buffs will wallow joyfully in Turner's intimate knowledge about trains. A curator emeritus at the Royal B.C. Museum, Turner seems to know everything about all the locomotives ever brought to Vancouver Island. These engines were often rebuilt, converted from wood to coal, or from coal to diesel, scrapped, or sold to other companies. Only a few were preserved and still exist today.

The writing is dry, but railroad fans will love Vancouver Island Railroads. For general interest readers, buy it for a friend or relative and read it whenever you're visiting.

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