Editorial - Victoria Times Colonist - July 9, 2002

THERE'S A NEW deal to keep the trains running along the E&N track between Victoria and Courtenay, and we hope it makes the grade. Everyone says they want the railway to keep operating, but not enough are prepared to climb aboard.

The last scheme, to run steam locomotives pulling refurbished antique passenger cars from the Johnson Street Bridge to the Malahat summit and back, sounded too good to be true.

The announced vision of Pacific Wilderness Express, to extend service further north and to Port Alberni and beyond, proved even more far-fetched after the company found the modest Malahat run beyond its capabilities. It dismantled its ticket office on Store Street and returned its rolling stock to Ohio. Its only legacy is the trees it cut down in Goldstream Park to improve the view.

The company complained of being tangled up in too much government red tape and, maybe, there was merit in its promoter's claim that it could have kept the steam trains running if it had been able to set up a ticket office in front of The Empress Hotel.

But the lesson appears to be that the E&N, to be economiclly viable, has to count on carrying more than passengers. Even the lure of forest scenery, luxurious coaches and chilled white wine can't make a passenger service pay for itself, it turns out.

The promising aspect of the latest deal announced Monday is that it's based largely on freight. It was the withdrawal of E&N's largest freight customer that struck what seemed to be a fatal blow to the railway.

When Norske Canada restructured its operations on the Island, it found the cost of moving logs by rail between Nanaimo and Port Alberni was 25 per cent higher than the cost of using trucks, forcing E&N to announce it was shutting down its freight operation on January 1 this year. Passenger service, no longer sustainable, was slated to end in March.

Local businesses kept the trains running a little longer with their donations, but that's no way to run a railroad. Now, the Vancouver Island Railway Development Initiative, a group of investors and municipal leaders, thinks it has found the freight volume needed to carry paying people as well.

Prospective passengers should not he alarmed that the biggest freight customer of the revitalized railway is to be Superior Propane.

Propane is far safer to move by rail than by truck, as all those drivers stranded by the Malahat spill two years ago will appreciate.

We should give this new deal our blessing. But even if isn't enough, Islanders should fight to keep the right of way intact. Because so long as there's rail, there's hope.

For Island's railway to survive, it needs freight. Let's hope propane shipments are the lifesaver.

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