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VancouverTransit
@VancouverTransit

Happy New Year!

If you live in Metro Vancouver and regularly listen to the radio like I do, you'll often hear about this section of highway called the "Burnaby Lake Stretch" during traffic reports. This is a three kilometre section of the Trans Canada Highway and provides a vital east-west link within the region.

It also used to be a railway.


Map showing all the stations on the Burnaby Lake Stretch

In 1964, the stretch was built over was previously the BC Electric Railway's Burnaby Lake Line, which closed 11 years earlier. In fact, much of the line is followed by the current-day freeway from Cariboo Rd. in the east to Douglas in the west. However, you can still to this day follow the route via a parallel path in Burnaby Lake Regional Park.

Path at Burnaby Lake Park

Unlike the Central Park Line, the Burnaby Lake Line did not have any evidence of its existence survive at all due to the construction of a freeway to replace it.

Interurban running through between Cumberland and Hill stations of the Burnaby Lake Line - City of Burnaby Archives

However, fortunately you can find one of the stations although it has moved a kilometre and a half from its original location.

Vorce Station at the Burnaby Village Museum

Vorce Station, which was once placed where the freeway passes the residential Nursery Street, was brought to the Burnaby Village Museum in 1977 and subsequently restored in 2008. It's to my knowledge the only station structure outside of the New Westminster and Carrall Street termini of the BCER to survive to this day.

BCER Interurban on display at the Burnaby Village Museum

Additionally, the same museum has a BCER interurban you can walk into, but that is a post for another time.


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