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12
October
55-49 : The End of the Interurban
This photo from 1955 provides an amazing view of the area around the Burrard Bridge. The Interurban electric railway system had ended and many of the trams were parked under the bridge waiting to be destroyed. The Molson brewery was still the Sicks’ Capilano Brewery, the old railway bridge still goes over False Creek, and the Seaforth Armoury is looking pretty quiet.
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Most of the long rows of cars on the tracks are in fact the modern, nearly new streetcars that were displaced by the hasty closure of the streetcar system in 1955. These cars had been set aside waiting for a purchaser – one which never came – as anti-streetcar attitudes all over the continent resulted in a surplus of nearly-new streetcars. These cars were taken to a field in Burnaby and eventually cut up for scrap, going to the steel company on Twigg Island. This is in contrast to the older cars which were mostly burned on the Kitsilano site, leaving nothing but ash and metal, the latter being salvaged. The Marpole-Steveston interurban was still running (closed February 28, 1958) and the cars used for this line were serviced in Kitsilano, which accounts for most of the older, larger interurban cars visible. It is also possible to see an electric freight locomotive, which appears to be of the same type that was preserved, one in Squamish at the West Coast Railway Association Heritage Park, and the other returning to Oregon, where these locomotives came from originally. Also visible is a BC Electric trolley bus of the type delivered in 1947-48; it was likely present at Kitsilano for a repaint, as the buses were painted at Kitsilano into the 1960’s.
I Still have ONE unopened Beer from here bottled in the early “40’s , before Phil Sicks Sold out to Molson. It has The Old style Lable and the bottle cap has the number 6 on it. its about 70 years old.