19 April 2007
Flawless Debut for Refurbished Royal Hudson
Over 5,000 people showed up for Royal Hudson's arrival
in White Rock.
White Rock British Columbia - When Val Drayton was a
little girl growing up in the 1930s she and her family would travel by train from New Westminster to White Rock for an afternoon's
outing at the beach that included fish and chips for lunch.
Last Sunday Drayton did much the same thing, but this time she travelled with her railway buff nephew Rick Bennett on a train pulled by
the refurbished 67-year-old steam locomotive Royal Hudson. Bennett had bought the tickets three months earlier after he
heard through the West Coast Railway Association that the Royal Hudson would be making its first run in eight years.
Drayton and Bennett were just two of 812 people who purchased a $50 one-way or $99 return ticket for the Vancouver to
White Rock trip organized to celebrate the seaside city's 50th birthday and to show off the engine.
Although invited dignitaries like provincial Minister of Transportation Kevin Falcon and Lieutenant Governor Iona Campagnolo were
no-shows for the locomotive's 10 a.m. start from Vancouver, White Rock Mayor Judy Forster was on hand. Forster said as the
daughter of a railway engineer the return of the Royal Hudson, that has visited White Rock three times before, had special meaning.
"White Rock has a very intimate relationship with the railway. It was the train that brought people to White Rock in the first
place," she said, adding that the Royal Hudson embodies a sense of that history.
Maureen McMillan understands that sentiment. McMillan's father, Sid Beales, was White Rock station's telegraph operator in the 1940s.
McMillan was on board one of the nine coaches the Royal Hudson pulled on Sunday's two-hour trip that took passengers
through Burnaby and over the Fraser River railway bridge from New Westminster to Surrey, along the Fraser River, over Mud Bay flats,
and around Crescent Beach to White Rock. McMillan said as children she and her siblings rode a train with her parents every Christmas
from White Rock to Vancouver to see Santa Claus at the Woodward's department store. Riding the train with her daughter,
son-in-law and two grandchildren McMillan teared up, noting that Sunday was the first time she'd ridden a train without
her father.
"He's here in spirit," she said.
The Royal Hudson 2860 was built in 1940 as a sister locomotive to the engine that pulled a train carrying King George VI and his wife,
Queen Elizabeth, on a 1939 cross-country tour. Built in Montreal, the Royal Hudson ran for 15 years from Revelstoke to
Vancouver before being retired in 1956. Rescued by a steam society in the mid-1960s, the locomotive was a fixture on the
West Coast leading a tourist train from North Vancouver to Squamish for 25 years. Facing a pricey boiler replacement the engine was
again retired in 1999. But a two-year boiler refit in Squamish by the West Coast Railway Association, made possible with
donations and government grants, has given the locomotive another life.
That the Royal Hudson has a special effect on people is not lost on Andy Faris. As master mechanic for the locomotive Faris, 21, said
he fell in love with the Royal Hudson as a young boy.
"My father sat me in the cab of this thing when I was about five years old and ever since I've wanted to run it and here I
am," he said. Faris admits he didn't get much sleep in the days leading up to the Royal Hudson's trip from its home at the West
Coast Railway Heritage Park's Squamish yards to Rocky Mountaineer terminals in Vancouver. It's Saturday deadhead run with crew,
generator car, back-up diesel locomotive, observation car, and two coaches was delayed for five and a half hours while
Faris and steam locomotive expert Al Broadfoot tightened bolts and triple checked mechanics. The trip over CN track from Squamish to
Vancouver went undisturbed as striking CN railway workers honoured a promise made earlier that week to not picket the locomotive's
journey.
Once in Vancouver the train switched to Burlington Northern Santa Fe track, added seven more coaches and a second observation car and
rested overnight at Rocky Mountaineer terminal before departing on time the following morning.
Project manager Singh Biln, who oversaw the Hudson's $675,000 boiler upgrade that allowed it to pass certification last fall and once
again hit the rails, said the stellar performance on Sunday points to further successes for the locomotive.
"This first trip was to show everyone that it will run again, that we can manage its operation, that it's safe and it's
popular," Biln said.
Crowds of onlookers waved from every railway crossing and every imaginable access point. Near the Alex Fraser Bridge a Mini Cooper
drove along a walking path the better to see the train before it arrived to a crowd of over 5,000 in White Rock. After passengers
disembarked for a two-hour-plus lunch break, the train travelled further to a siding in order to move an F7 diesel
(Editor's note: It's an FP9A.) locomotive into lead position. Trip organizers had originally hoped to travel four miles further
along Burlington Northern Santa Fe track and turn the complete train around just over the U.S. border, but were refused entry. After
picking up passengers, the train made its return to Vancouver with the diesel leading and Royal Hudson running backwards.
Don Evans, president of the railway association responsible for setting the Royal Hudson back on the tracks, said American railway
regulators wouldn't allow the steam locomotive to cross because the engine being driven by steam engineer Gene Davis lacked a second
water glass, a steam pressure gauge.
(Editor's note: A water glass is not a steam pressure gauge. A water glass is a glass tube
showing the level of water present in the boiler. Should the water level become too low there is danger the crown sheet, that portion
of the boiler directly over the firebox, will be exposed. Overheating of the crown sheet might cause a boiler explosion so you can see
the importance of watching the water level.)
A small glitch in an otherwise successful day, Evans said the Royal Hudson's flawless trip will mean more excursions for the
locomotive, the next perhaps being to North Vancouver to celebrate its centenary in June.
"We have a couple of things up our sleeve," Evans said, "that will hopefully see the engine around a lot more of British
Columbia over the next couple of years.
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