A Great Northern Railway plan titled PROP. REMOVAL OF DOCK AND TRACKS ON SAME; MOVING DEPOT AND STOCKYARD TO NEW LOCATIONS; GRAVELING ROADWAY; CONSTRUCTING 220' OIL SPUR, ETC., AT GUICHON, B.C., dated Feb. 18, 1923.

The origins of the plans, predating 1923, are evident with the Victoria Terminal Railway & Ferry Company's name still present even though the line was absorbed into the Vancouver, Victoria & Eastern Railway & Navigation Company in 1907.

Marked in yellow is removal of the dock and its two tracks atop the Fraser River; red the changes to be made. The 40' x 22' depot was moved from the dock to what is now Station Street, newly-built with the arrival of the old depot. The spur track along Savoy Street was extended in 1914 to access a milk condensor plant (top-right) which was a mainstay of traffic right up to the line's abandonment in 1935.

The plans are 34.5" x 24", too large for a conventional scanner so a digital photo was taken. Thus there are limitations of the resolution but accord a good overview of the facilities. A large bungalow, two car body shacks, handcar house and a section house sit on the north side of the tracks west of Monkman Road (marked by hand as Fairview Road which is now 46A Street).

The combined rail and passenger ferry Victorian at Port Guichon in 1903, perhaps on her inaugural run from Sidney on May 7, 1903. She could transport at least eight cars on her twin-tracked deck, linked to the rails of the Victoria & Sidney Railway on Vancouver Island. The Victorian, a powerful steamer originally built by the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company in 1891, and converted to carry rolling stock early in 1903 at Victoria, had ceased operation to Port Guichon by 1904 in favour of a freight-only tug and barge service. In 1910 she was beached north of Seattle and burned for scrap.

A passenger train sits on the track to the right of the 225-foot ferry slip, with the depot on the corner. The ferry, traversing 48 miles of water between Sidney and Port Guichon, linked Vancouver Island and Victoria with the GNR network from Chicago. Rail barges would continue to service the Vancouver Island line until its abandonment in 1919.

A proper scan of the GNR plan showing a close-up of the dock facilities in the general direction of the photo above. A corral and stock chute shows as being built on the dock in 1908, cattle replacing the passengers who initially arrived or departed here on the Victorian. With the dock's removal at Guichon in 1923, the only GNR marine facility on the Fraser River was at New Westminster along Front Street where there was a VV&E warehouse, and a freight house and wharf of the Northern Pacific Railway which the GNR controlled.

The GNR's old line across the Fraser from New Westminster at Liverpool, where they ran rail barges for many years, was now in the hands of the CNR whose predecessor, the CNoR, attempted a combined rail and passenger ferry to Vancouver Island further upriver at Port Mann. A ship was built, the Canora, with first-class accommodation and room for the new transcontinental's passenger cars, but she was relegated to freight-only service.