Incorporated on February 27, 1912, the Pacific Great Eastern Railway was British Columbia's largest railway and once Canada's third largest. Originally the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE), the name was changed in 1972 to British Columbia Railway, and again in 1984 the official name became BC Rail.
A standard cupola wood (apparently now plywood covered) caboose, this was likely once a PGE unit of the early 1800 series, likely built in about 1956. All siblings we have encountered were once boxcars built in the teens and twenties, converted to cabooses in the mid 1950s. That said, we believe this caboose to have had s similar history.
Reportedly, this Caboose is from the last train through the area in 1990. Bearing no visible ID number, it was almost certainly of the original 1800 PGE series. With the name changes to the line, the caboose numbers remained the same, so this would be numbered 18XX.
Pacific Great Eastern Railway
British Columbia's largest railroad and Canada's third largest was the Pacific Great Eastern Railway of the early 20th century. The system languished for years as an incomplete, money-losing operation with a few hundred miles in service north of Vancouver.
This changed after World War II when government funding helped expand the PGE by several hundred miles and it continued to grow throughout the 1980s.
By then the railroad was renamed as the British Columbia Railway and efforts were in place to extend it to the Alaskan border, finally allowing that state to connect with the North American rail network.
This proposal would ultimately fall through due to rising costs. Later, the BC Rail system disappeared into Canadian National, which now leases the entire railroad from the local government.
From American Rail