Surrey’s city staff is working with the Fraser Valley Heritage Rail Society to explore expanding beyond Sullivan Station into Newton.
Councillor Linda Annis’s motion was passed unanimously at the city’s last council meeting.
“I think it has real value from a tourism perspective,” she told the Now-Leader. “What a great thing to be able to come and ride the rail train from Newton and go into Cloverdale, visit Cloverdale, go to the museum, go to the truck museum, visit the whole heritage notion of Cloverdale. I think it will do a lot to build traffic going to Cloverdale both for retail and businesses but also making it more of a destination of historical significance.”
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Annis noted that the Fraser Valley Heritage Rail Society, formed in 2001 at council’s direction, is entirely run by volunteers who donate thousands of hours each year to operating and maintaining the rail line, which has been temporarily closed in 2020 because of the pandemic. But when it’s running, you can catch a 55-minute return trip departing from Cloverdale Station at Highway 10 and 176th Street to Sullivan Station at 64th Avenue and 152nd Street and back.
The society was formed to obtain and restore what remains of the BC Electric Railway Interurban trains. The original line, which still exists, carried passengers between New Westminster and Chilliwack. The BCER was incorporated in 1897.
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