Burnaby Central Railway: A 3 km miniature train ride in Metro Vancouver

Burnaby Central Railway: A whimsical 3 km miniature train ride in Metro Vancouver

Burnaby Central Railway. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Looking for a whimsical alternative to the Stanley Park Train?

The comparatively lesser-known alternative is the Burnaby Central Railway at Confederation Park, located at the northern foot of Willingdon Avenue in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood in North Burnaby.

It spans a seven-acre area at 120 North Willingdon Avenue, featuring over three km of track through treed areas with two bridges, two viaducts, two tunnels, crossovers, and spirals. Each looping ride takes about 10 minutes.

Compared to the Stanley Park Train, which features a two-km-long, 20-gauge track and uses covered carriages for its passenger cars, the Burnaby Central Railway is a significantly narrower railway with a 7.5-gauge track, with passengers sitting single file on a bench. But each train on the Central Railway still carries as many as 20 or more passengers on multiple cars.

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Moreover, all of the locomotives used on the Central Railway are designed and built to be miniature replicas of real-world locomotives, including working models based on vintage steam, diesel, and electric vehicles. Of special note, their steam engines are one-eighth scale real miniature replicas, which are mainly fuelled by propane.

In 2023, a new locomotive was introduced — a model of the GP7 diesel locomotive. Over 2,700 of these locomotives were built between 1949 and 1954, commonly used across Canada and the United States for decades.

The entire attraction’s operation and maintenance is a labour of love by the volunteers of the British Columbia Society of Model Engineers (BCSME). Central Railway at its present location in Confederation Park celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2023, and BCSME will mark its centennial in 2029.

Burnaby Central Railway is impressively completely volunteer-owned and operated.

It has quite the history of building its 7-acre attraction at Confederation Park over 30 years ago.

The landscaping sits on 8,000+ trucks of fill from the Cassiar Tunnel.https://t.co/KtUGctWiHq pic.twitter.com/v6DJOJeaxy

— Kenneth Chan (@iamkennethchan) March 29, 2024

Burnaby Central Railway. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

This Easter long weekend will mark the start of the Central Railway’s 2024 operating season.

“We run almost solely on volunteers, keeping our rides and concessions affordable. Our trains look, act and even smell like the real thing because they are real, one-eighth size locomotives,” said Ken Lear, president of BCSME.

“It’s exciting to be part of the activity when we’re running each weekend, and we encourage anyone who wants to volunteer and help us run the miniature railway to contact us.”

The volunteer-driven organization’s origins date back to 1929, when local miniature railway enthusiasts created a model engineering club. For decades, they used private property to run their model trains, until 1975, when they opened their initial public attraction at the Burnaby Village Museum at Burnaby Lake.

But they quickly outgrew their available footprint at Burnaby Village Museum, and determined that they needed a much larger permanent home.

Working with the City of Burnaby, the municipal works yard at Confederation Park was identified as the site of the new permanent expanded and relocated home of their attraction.

After more than a decade of planning and fundraising, construction began in November 1991 with a budget of $347,000 ($672,000 in 2024 dollars), with $154,000 from the municipal government, $112,000 from the provincial government’s lottery revenue, $19,000 from the federal government, $35,000 from ticket sales of the original Burnaby Village Museum attraction, and the remainder from private and corporate donations.

1991 condition of the construction site for Burnaby Central Railway. (British Columbia Society of Model Engineers)

1992 condition of the construction site for Burnaby Central Railway. (British Columbia Society of Model Engineers)

The relatively slim budget was made possible by the immense labour cost savings from having much of the project designed and built by volunteers, including BCIT students who performed detailed surveying work. More specifically, about 40,000 volunteer hours went into the construction, mostly by about 60 people.

There were also other substantial cost savings from donated construction equipment and materials, including gravel and fuel from companies, as well as a range of technical professional services offered for free. Paid contractors building the car barn and station also performed their work at cost.

As well, the landscaping of the Central Railway is built on about 8,400 truck loads of fill from the nearby Cassiar Connector tunnel construction project for Highway 1 in the general vicinity of East Hastings Street — between Adanac and Triumph streets. The Cassiar Connector reached completion and opened in 1992.

The Cassiar Connector’s fill was used to soften the site’s steep slope, particularly on the northeast corner. In return for substantially cutting down the travel distance of the trucks removing the fill from the tunnel construction site, resulting in major cost savings for the tunnel’s trucking operations, BCSME earned $7.00 per truck load or a total of roughly $58,000.

After 18 months of construction, Burnaby Central Railway at Confederation Park opened to the public on Canada Day, July 1, 1993.

Various major improvements and expansions have been performed to the attraction over the past three decades, including most recently the 2018 opening of the very miniature Garden Railway.

Burnaby Central Railway. (British Columbia Society of Model Engineers)

The Central Railway typically sees about 100,000 visitors each year — roughly half of the 200,000 visitors on the Stanley Park Train, which also operates during select holidays and on a seasonal basis.

According to BCSME, since 1993, the Central Railway has recorded over 1.3 million passenger boardings, 6,200 birthday parties, and 220,000 volunteer hours.

For the 2024 operating season, the Central Railway will officially open on Good Friday, March 29 and close on Thanksgiving Monday, October 14. Within this period, the attraction will open only on weekends and statutory holidays from 11 am to 5 pm.

The Central Railway’s supporting facilities for visitors include accessible public washrooms, a small museum and gift ship, and a concession stand serving hot dogs, ice cream, drinks, and snacks, and a grassy picnic area.

Fares for riding the Central Railway are $4.50 for a single trip for all passengers three years old and up. Visitors can also buy a package of 10 ride passes for $40.00 for use over multiple days with no expiration.

Burnaby Central Railway. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Location of Burnaby Central Railway at Confederation Park. (British Columbia Society of Model Engineers)

Central Railway’s entrance is located on Penzance Drive — just north of Confederation Park’s sports fields and aquatic centre, about five blocks north of East Hastings Street. It is a short walking distance from various frequent bus routes, including the R5 Hastings Street RapidBus.

As for the historic Stanley Park Train, it will be open this Easter long weekend, and then later in 2024 for the Ghost Train Halloween and Bright Nights Christmas operating seasons. Tickets for the four-day Easter long weekend operation are sold out.

The Stanley Park Train reopened in late 2023 following a prolonged and controversial years-long closure initially due to the pandemic, and then later from the Vancouver Park Board’s poor maintenance standards. It did not pass an initial Technical Safety BC inspection.

In order to reopen the Stanley Park Train in time for the 2023 Bright Nights Christmas operating season, a reinvestment of $650,000 was provided to cover the costs of fixing the tracks and one of the locomotives of the attraction’s fleet. Most of these initial repairs were covered by a $500,000 private donation.

Earlier in 2024, the City of Vancouver announced its intent to hire Hedgehog Technologies to perform engineering consultant services for the ongoing rehabilitation work of the Stanley Park Train. The company previously provided consultant services for the initial phase of work, and the latest contract is worth about $116,000.

The first iteration of the Stanley Park Train, also known as the Stanley Park Railway, opened in 1947.

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