[2] Until 2004 it operated as the third-largest railway in Canada, providing freight, passenger, and excursion rail services throughout BC on 2,320 km (1,440 mi) of mainline track.

In 2004, the freight operations (including a vast amount of land, buildings, and all rolling stock) of BC Rail were leased to Canadian National Railway (CN) for an initial period of 60 years, with the exception of the Deltaport Spur, for the price of $550 million.

Upon incorporation, the PGE took over the Howe Sound and Northern Railway, which at that point had built 14 kilometres (9 mi) of track north of Squamish.

However, the railway had an agreement with the municipality of West Vancouver to provide passenger service that it was unable to get out of until 1928, when they paid the city $140,000 in support of its road-building programme.

It existed mainly to connect logging and mining operations in the British Columbia Interior with the coastal town of Squamish, where resources could then be transported by sea.

The unfortunate state of the railway caused it to be given nicknames such as "Province's Great Expense", "Prince George Eventually", "Past God's Endurance", "Please Go Easy", and "Puff, Grunt and Expire".

By 1958 the PGE had reached north from Prince George to Fort St. John and to Dawson Creek where it met the Northern Alberta Railways.

The government then leased it, along with ex-Canadian Pacific 2-8-0 #3716 to the British Columbia Railway, which started excursion service with the locomotive between North Vancouver and Squamish on June 20, 1974.

Track had been laid to Jackson Creek (lat 56°50, long 128°12′), 423 kilometres (263 mi) past Fort St. James, and clearing and grading were in progress on the rest of the extension.

[12] It recommended that construction not continue on the 240 kilometres (149 mi) of roadbed between Dease Lake and the current end of track, and that trains be terminated at Driftwood (approx.

However, it was reopened in 1991 and, as of 2005, extends to a point called Minaret Creek, British Columbia (lat 56°20′, long 127°17′), still over 282 kilometres (175 mi) south of Dease Lake.

The Bullmoose mine closed on April 10, 2003, after which the remaining 112.0 kilometres (69.6 mi) of the Tumbler Ridge Subdivision between Teck and Wakely was abandoned, although the track is still in place.

The RDCs have since been sold to various museums and operators around North America, such as the Wilton Scenic Railroad in New Hampshire and the West Coast Railway Association in Squamish.

[15] On May 13, 2003, BC Premier Gordon Campbell announced that the government would sell the operations of the railway (including all assets other than the rail right-of-way).

The contract requires CN to yield trackage to any private operator who requests it for the purposes of carrying passengers on commercially reasonable terms.

At Moran, on June 29, 2006, a diesel locomotive hauling one flatcar of lumber down the steep Pavilion grade 29 km (18 mi) north of Lillooet had its air brakes fail.

With some mills already curtailing operations and a further slowdown expected due to the emerging COVID-19 pandemic, on-line traffic did not warrant use of the 436 km (271 mi) section of railway, which runs through treacherous and maintenance-intensive territory.

The remaining traffic in Williams Lake and points north now moves to the Greater Vancouver area via Prince George and the CN mainline.

On the Squamish Subdivision, CN reportedly provided service to Continental Log homes in Mount Currie, and continues to use the line for railcar storage.

In addition to gold concentrate and ore, Evans and other companies based in Shalalth carried passengers, heavy equipment, and supplies of all kinds over the Mission Pass.

Since the line opened, the PGE had provided passenger service between Squamish and Quesnel (as well as between North Vancouver and Horseshoe Bay until operations were discontinued there in 1928).

This service reduction led to public outrage, and the British Columbia government agreed to provide subsidies for passenger operations.

BC Rail replaced the service between Lillooet and nearby Seton Portage and D'Arcy with a pair of railbuses, called "track units" by the railway.

The railbus on the Kaoham Shuttle makes at least one round trip between Seton Portage and Lillooet daily, and also serves D'Arcy if there is sufficient demand.

In 1997, BC Rail introduced the Pacific Starlight dinner train, which ran in evenings between May and October between North Vancouver and Porteau Cove.

[citation needed] A series of lodges of varying quality grew up along the railway, drawing on weekend tourist excursions from Vancouver via the MV Britannia steamer service to Squamish.

The most famous of these was Rainbow Lodge at Whistler, then called Alta Lake, but others were at Birken Lake, Whispering Falls, D'Arcy, Ponderosa, McGillivray Falls, Seton Portage, the Bridge River townsite (where there was a first-class hotel serving mining and hydro executives and their guests), Shalalth, Retaskit and at Craig Lodge near Lillooet.

In 1970, the railway started using remote controlled mid-train locomotives, allowing longer and heavier trains to be operated through the steep grades of the Coast Mountains.

[25] The railway also leased seven GF6C electric locomotives made by GMD for use on the electrified Tumbler Ridge Subdivision from 1983 until electrification was removed in 2000.

In 2004, the Paul D. Roy family purchased engine 6001 and they donated it to the British Columbia Railway & Forest Industry Museum in Prince George; the remaining six were scrapped.