Corporate body

British Columbia Electric Railway Company

1897-1961

British Columbia Electric Railway was a railway and streetcar company operating from 1897 to 1961. A London-based company chaired by Robert M. Horne-Payne and R. Henry Sperling overtook the bankrupt Consolidated Railway Company on April 3, 1897, incorporating it as the British Columbia Electric Railway company. By 1903 B.C. Electric began building its own streetcars, inter-urbans, locomotives, work equipment and freight cars in a shop in New Westminster. Over the following years BC Electric provided increasingly expanding rail and bus transit for passengers and freight across Southern British Columbia. As World War Two came to an end, B.C. Electric implemented a ‘Rails to Rubber’ programme, replacing electric railway streetcars with Presidents’ Conference Committee (PCC) Streetcars. In 1961 the provincial government took over BC Electric with the railway becoming a division of Crown corporation BC Hydro.

Authority record updated in 2017 by Claire Williams.

Information derived from the following sources: http://www.exporail.org/can_rail/Canadian%20Rail_no534_2010.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_Electric_Railway