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Ride the rails in Confederation Park

Tuesday, May 30th, 2006 by GetawayBC.com

By Wanda Chow

NewsLeader

Anyone wanting to experience the joys of rail travel without leaving their own city can do just that at Burnaby Central Railway adjacent to Confederation Park.

That’s where the 160 members of the B.C. Society of Model Engineers operates their scale model railway, one-eighth of full size. They offer rides to the public on weekends and holidays, on its 6.5-acre, city-owned site.

The society was established in 1928 and in 1975 started offering rides at Heritage Village Museum as it was then called. But they didn’t have space there to expand so in 1993, they opened up at their current location which previously served as a works yard.

Society members brought in 8,500 truckloads of fill excavated from the Cassiar tunnel project and built their railway, complete with bridges, tunnels and a station. The track itself stretches more than three kilometres.

It’s the largest miniature railway of its kind in Canada and one of the largest in North America that’s open to the public.

“Kids of all ages love these trains,” said the society’s Lindsay McDonnell. Of the more than 30,000 riders a year, many are repeat customers and more than half are adults.

Society members not only like trains, they like designing, building and operating them. And they’re sticklers for detail. Trains are built to within 1/1,000 of an inch to scale and are modelled after real-life trains.

In contrast, the trains operated at the Stanley Park miniature railway are simply “old style,” not to scale, McDonnell explained.

Members either build and run their own trains or ones owned and maintained by the society itself. The types of model trains they use run the gamut, from steam trains, to a currently-under-construction model TGV, a French bullet train.

The trains don’t necessarily operate exactly like their full-size counterparts. For instance, the steam trains produce their steam using propane, not coal, with at least one member’s “steam train” running on electric power, although it can emit plumes of steam on demand.

Proceeds from the rides help pay for the upkeep and operation of the railway. At speeds of more than 10 kilometres an hour, the trains can pull up to 30 passengers, with a typical ride lasting 10 to 15 minutes.

Burnaby Central Railway is located at 120 North Willingdon Avenue, at Penzance Drive. For more information call 604-291-0922 or visit www.bcsme.org.

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