Occasionally I get e-mail from visitors asking questions about this website, why it was created and the person behind it. As a car inspector for Canadian National Railway, working along the old Great Northern right-of-way at Port Mann, my latent interest in railways started after a fellow employee loaned me a book on local history. The book briefly outlined the New Westminster Southern that ran through the lower mainland, the remaining section of the railway now used by CN. Until recently our small carman's building was located at the foot of Bon Accord Hill, very close to where the NWSR flagstop would have been.

Previously the Great Northern Railway was familiar to me only through my bicycle touring, when outside of Rexford, Montana, a roadside plaque told of the GN main line that was now buried beneath Lake Koocanusa. Coming home on this month-long trip I travelled from Sedro-Woolley to the international boundary at Sumas City, surprised to see a railway along the way—the Burlington Northern, whose rolling stock was familiar to me as a carman. I caught glimpses of the BN in other places during this trip, including one of their locomotives on a siding in Salmo, but at the time never knew that the GN and the BN were one and the same (not until some years later).

Curious as I was about the railways encountered, very little attention was paid to rail history on subsequent cycling tours or the time in-between. Like many Canadians I knew of the Canadian Pacific and how important it was in the formation of a coast-to-coast Canada, but other railways were vague to me including the one I worked for. Cycling was a way to escape work—a holiday—so business was rarely mixed with pleasure.

Shortly after reading of the NWSR and the Great Northern, BNSF motive power started coming directly into Port Mann, a time when the CN and the BNSF were attempting to merge. Although the merger was initially nixed, then forgotten, BNSF locomotives still arrive daily with northbound traffic and return with southbound trains to Everett, Washington, which we service and air test. (The BNSF 1055 seen at the top of this page was photographed at Port Mann.)

These events—bicycle touring, knowledge of the NWSR, and then the arrival of the BNSF—motivated me to create a website. What started out with a couple of simple pages has grown into the site you see today, a reflection of my continuing interest in the subject.

In the summer of 2000 I took my first cycling holiday as a railfan, crisscrossing southern British Columbia in an attempt to visit areas missed on previous trips. Today, instead of roads or highways I think in terms of railways—this journey encompassing parts of the CP main line; Kettle Valley; Vancouver, Victoria & Eastern; Columbia & Western; Nakusp & Slocan, among others. Although not related to railfanning, see my cycling page for the most recent tour done in the summer of 2006, and others.