Pacific Great Eastern 0-6-0 Locomotives in Canada

Class 3 (Locobase 16501)

Data from diagram of Great Eastern Railway Locomotive No. 3 drawn by Greg M. Kennelly dated 22 September 2010 and supplied in August 2013 by Allen Stanley from his extensive Rail Data Exchange collection. See also McBride, Richard, Sir, 1870-1917. Speech by Sir Richard McBride In Moving the Second Reading of the Pacific Great Eastern Bill. [British Columbia?: s.n., 1914. pp. 1-7; [], last accessed 9 September 2007 (later relocated to Facebook @GoldenCayoosh, The ABC British Columbia lumber trade directory ... 1916/17, p. 49. Works number was 1477 in February 1914; and

A relatively large engine produced by the Iowa builder in its namesake city and delivered to P Welch & Company, a Vancouver-based lumber company with mills at Cheakmus and Mons, BC. A note in the ABC guide described its market as "For own use in railway construction".

Apparently the Davenport followed a frequently traveled path in which the locomotive used for building a railway then entered service on that railway. In this case, the engine wound up on the Pacific Great Eastern as its #3.

The Pacific Great Eastern (PGE) was intended to be the unifying transportation element for the province of British Columbia. Mike Cleven of the Cayoosh website noted above 1-7comments: "Originally begun before the Great War of 1914-18, the line was assailed by its critics as a line 'from nowhere to nowhere', running as it did in its first phase only between Pemberton and Lillooet."

Pemberton lies on the Lillooet River just north of the Lillooet Lake in a wide valley separated from most of the rest of BC by mountains all around. After World War I, the PGE extended southwest toward Vancouver, reaching Squamish (then called Newport) and extended to the Cariboo and Prince George. By then, the line was close enough to the Vancouver area that travellers from Vancouver took ferries from the Vancouver waterfront to connect to the rail line. It was only after World War II, however, that the railway reached Vancouver to the Pemberton Avenue Station in North Vancouver.