So, sometime before mid-2002, it must've been, back before BC Rail got privatised, sold to CN Rail, and subsequently dismantled (thanks BC Liberals!), I remember the one time I ever rode their passenger service that ran from North Vancouver to, most of the time, Lillooet, and sometimes all the way to Prince George. So, that's 250km for the shorter trip, but 750km for the longer one.
We got up quite early in the morning to board it, which involved… I think one of my parents drove us to the "station"; just a stop with a sign at the side of the single track, and drove the rest of the way up — but then we were waiting, in the dim twilight of the early morning, on a cold and humid day, by the train track, where the train would just stop, and we'd get on it.
And then it showed up! A train of Budd DMUs; the usual for BC Rail's plain old passenger services — they had a locomotive-hauled dinner train that went along there on some evenings, the Pacific Starlight, and also ran an impressive old steam locomotive, the Royal Hudson, for tourist trains (and oh my god, I remember the Royal Hudson passing by our house occasionally when I was a very small child, and that was the most exciting thing?) — but for people who just had places to get to, it was sensible little DMUs.
So we got on board, and had what was basically airplane food for breakfast, but we were on a train and it was fucking exciting because, like, this might've been before the first time I ever remembered being on a plane? So Mass Transit That's Larger And Comfier Than A D40LF was a novelty to me, ahahaha. And we took it all the way up to Whistler, which probably took well over two hours; it was bright out by the time we got out at the station there, which was way over toward Creekside, IIRC. That station location was definitely decided back when people mostly went up to Whistler for the lakes in the summer as opposed to for skiing in the winter, so probably back when it was the Pacific Great Eastern (which ran from North Van to Lillooet — not very eastern, IMO!!) running passenger services on the route.
It was definitely at least a somewhat overcast day, and oh gosh, tiny little me was delighted to have gotten to ride the train!
…and I hope to see trains along there again in the future, but given how much capacity freight is taking up, that's going to take some rail infrastructure upgrades to permit any kind of useful passenger service, lmao.
