GN's 1934 system map showing the broken route of the VV&E. By this time, although not reflected in the map, the line between Colebrook and Abbotsford ("Abbottsford" on the GN station) was abandoned. Not shown is the section that went back into British Columbia from Oroville to Bridesville and Midway and then returned across the border to Curlew, which was cut off in 1931 and abandoned entirely in 1935.

The GN line from Nelson to the main line at Spokane was originally built in 1893 by D.C. Corbin's Spokane Falls & Northern Railway (SF&N), the Canadian section known as the Nelson & Fort Sheppard Railway. In 1898 GN gained control of the SF&N and by 1902 had extended the line from Marcus to Grand Forks and Republic.

In 1905, after diverging from Curlew to reach Midway in British Columbia, the VV&E's charter was amended to allow further westward construction to go through parts of Okanogan County in Washington, reaching Oroville and, back into British Columbia, Keremeos by 1907. The American sections from Marcus to Chopaka were chartered as the Washington & Great Northern Railway, although still considered to be the SF&N many years after the company was dissolved as a GN subsidiary in 1907.

1909 GN Time Table: Spokane to Keremeos

The line south from Oroville via Tonasket and Omak to GN's main line at Wenatchee, a source of much British Columbia traffic, was not built until 1914. The new line provided easy downhill grades for the mine haul and other freight heading south to the GN main line, avoiding the precipitous, border-hopping route to reach the same at Spokane.

Prior to the construction of the Oroville-Wenatchee line, eastbound GN trains had to climb a steep 25-mile grade from Oroville to Molson, whose railway station (elevation 3708 feet) was one of the highest in Washington State. This section of American track was abandoned in 1931, with Molson to Curlew remaining in service until 1935 when permission was granted in British Columbia to abandon the VV&E from Bridesville to Midway (see map below).

Godfrey to Chopaka (1909)
Select for a full-size view (1025 x 416; 104K)

Although the VV&E from Vancouver to Brookmere was a financial disaster the line from Hedley, located between Princeton and Keremeos, was busy for many years hauling ore from the successful Nickel Plate Mine (gold was first discovered in Hedley in 1898). Coal and ice from west of Princeton, at Coalmont and Tulameen, were mainstays of the line during the early years. But like all GN traffic none of it headed for Hope and the VV&E in the Fraser Valley.

Into the Mountains Past Hope

In 1934 service from Princeton to Hedley was discontinued and officially abandoned in 1937, the right-of-way to be used as part of a new highway. In 1944 GN cancelled, at great cost, the Coquihalla Agreement allowing it to use the CP-owned KVR from Hope to Brookmere. The following year the GN-built section from Brookmere to Princeton, no longer connected to any GN trackage, was sold to the CP for continuing use as part of its KVR. At the same time GN cancelled, again at great cost, its agreement with CN to use their main line from Cannor to Hope -- last used by the GN in 1919. Thus ended the last corporate vestiges of the VV&E.

Hedley to Keremeos remained in service until 1955, when the mine at Hedley closed down; Keremeos to Oroville until 1972, although was not officially abandoned until many years later. Vancouver, however, would prove most profitable and GN's modern-day golden corridor into British Columbia, accessing what would become North America's second busiest port.

The BNSF main line from Fraser River Junction across the Fraser River Bridge (New Westminster Bridge) to Vancouver is still shared today with CN, the two railways having formed a close partnership operating that section as joint track and sharing the Brownsville industrial line from Townsend to Tilbury. (The bridge is managed by CN for Public Works Canada under "Entrusted Agreement".) In 1969 CN completed the two-mile Thornton Tunnel, just off of Willingdon Junction on the then-GN main line, to the newly built North Shore Bridge across the Second Narrows of Burrard Inlet. Although first traversed by rail in 1925, the new bridge and tunnel allowed CN direct access to facilities in North Vancouver and the lumber-rich resources of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (now BC Rail), much of whose traffic flows south to American markets through the BNSF. Lumber also comes in by rail ferry to Tilbury from Vancouver Island's historic Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway.

Note on BNSF's 1999 system map above the inclusion of Roberts Bank. Originating in Cloverdale the line running west through Colebrook to this deep-water coal terminal was built in 1970 by the British Columbia Harbours Board Railway using much of the same roadbed GN used for the VTR&F to Ladner. The section is now owned and operated by BC Rail but run none of their trains on it. In the not-too-distant past BN used to haul American coal to the terminal. The old GN right-of-way west of Cloverdale sees daily CN and CP coal trains and, with the new Deltaport at Roberts Bank, intermodal traffic to relieve the strain on the port of Vancouver. The BNSF also has a quarter-mile of running rights to access the Sumas-Huntingdon interchange and connect with the Southern Railway of British Columbia.

BNSF New Westminster Subdivision: Vancouver to the boundary. Select for a full-size view (40K)

The old NWSR from Port Kells is now part of CN's Yale Subdivision, travelling through Hampton alongside their "VIT" (Vancouver Intermodal Terminal), Douglas Island and Bungalow Y to Thornton Yard where the main line (CTC) officially ends. Bon Accord, originally a pioneer water stop and post office for steamboats on the Fraser River, and once a small station on the NWSR, is now the midway point of Thornton's two main traffic yards.

Westward from Thornton, commonly referred to as Port Mann, the line runs along much of the NWSR's original route built in 1891, passing underneath the Fraser River Bridge -- built in 1904 -- to reach Brownsville. Today, with the increasing co-operation of the two railways, BNSF trains and their motive power now diverge at Brownsville and travel directly to and from Thornton, using trackage of what was the Great Northern's first railway in British Columbia.