A By-Gone Train Station

 Hullo! The other day (week/month)... I went to Duncan...

We went to a farmer's market here a few weeks ago but I wanted to come back and check out some more of the town.

Well... actually... just this part of town! They have a legit CNR (Canadian National Railways) caboose here!!!

I saw one years (and years) ago in Winnipeg! But this one is much closer to home.

Duncan is famous for its totem poles. They have a LOT!

And some of them even have bears!

You can learn something about each totem here. They even have a walking tour of downtown that will lead you to all of them (yellow footprints painted on the sidewalk).

That's the Pole of Wealth... see the creature on the bottom...

It's a bear!

And one more picture of the caboose... cause I know some bears who are train fiends...

And... the old train station is still here too!

Those would have been the days...

Back in the day, it was the E&N Railway (Esquimalt and Nanaimo)... and then for a while, it was run by the CPR (they bought the tracks in 1905).

This is what the train station looked like in 1911. Beary cool!

And then for a while, ViaRail ran passenger trains on the tracks. In amongst all the freight trains.

But that was a beary long time ago. The Duncan train station closed in 1980. The last trains stopped running in 2011. There has long been talk of resurrecting train service from Courtenay down to Victoria but... the rail line is in seriously bad shape.

So it's unlikely to happen. But at least the train station has a second life.

Ooh... you see the weather vane on the roof!?

It's a train!!!

Isn't that cool?? Whoops... still on super-zoom... let's back out a bit.

That's better. Nothing like a zoomed-in bear gaze to give humans a guilty conscience! But... wait a minute? Why is a CNR caboose sitting at a CPR railway station???

That is a beary good question... and a bit of a mystery... so Sherlock Sandy did some digging...

We always knew about the E&N Railway line that ran from Victoria, up the east side of the Island, all the way to Courtenay, with a side line to Port Alberni. But... there was a completely separate line, the CNR (well, initially the Canadian Northern Pacific Line - that got rolled into the CNR), which ran from Victoria through the Cowichan Valley and then up to Port Alberni. We didn't know that!!! And when the CNR line closed, the city of Duncan bought the caboose! Beary smart! It's a piece of history!

Well, that's cool! We learned something new today! And... we actually hiked a bit of the old CNR line when we visited the Kinsol Trestle, the largest wooden trestle in the Commonwealth!

Let's check out the other side of the train station, the street side.

Oooh.. more totem poles!

Beary cool.

The inside of the train station is now a museum!

That's a great use of the space!

This totem is a perfect size for a little bear.

The museum covers the history of the area...

Did you know Cowichan sweaters come from here? Yes they do!

There's a mock-up of a general store... no honey for little bears though.

They had a mining display too...

There was a copper mine on Mount Sicker (which is near Duncan)... way back in the olden days!

We went to another copper mine a few months ago - Britannia Mines on the mainland!

Like so many mines, they started strong and then fizzled. This one shipped its ore to the smelter in Crofton.

That's the Crofton smelter in the olden days...

That's where Britannia shipped its ore too, for a while!

Kind of a cool story. There was a little town up on Mt. Sicker, with a hotel and everything. But once it fizzled, it all became a ghost town and eventually the buildings were destroyed or torn down.

Some cool stuff here.

Now, though. Another company is looking at "mining" all of the old mine tailings from Mt. Sicker because it's actually got some good ore quality! Go figure. We had thought we would poke around Mt. Sicker at one point... then we saw the following video...

And decided... nope... No desire to fall into a 200 ft vertical shaft with no barriers!!!

Would you go poking around an old mining area where there were deep vertical shafts?

Britannia Mines - The Honeywagon...

 Sooo... you may be wondering where the miners went to the bathroom when they went down into the mine tunnels... Well, they had this little contraption that came down on the little railway.

It's a little cart that has a toilet at each end!

I don't know about this... seriously... I guess if you were desperate, in a pinch.

Although the name for this thing is completely disgusting...

It was called the "honeywagon"!!! Honestly... humans have no respect for honey!

Alright... we are getting closer to the big concentrator building... it's known as Mill 3... there was a Mill 1 and a Mill 2!

Ooooh.... looks like some rain is coming down the Sound... that's OK... we are going underground soon.

Oooh!!! You see that big ship!!! That's that ship that was converted into living quarters for the crews working on the Woodfibre LNG plant... The SS Isabel or something? It was docked in our harbour for months while they tried to get a permit to park it over here...

Cool!!

We are on the west side of Mill 3 and these are the foundations of Mill 1. It got too small real fast so they built Mill 2 which burnt down... and then Mill 3 was born!

Alright... are you ready... claustrophobic? Don't worry... I got you!

We all got on a little tiny train...

The humans got to wear hardhats...

We were told to keep all arms, legs, heads and bears (!) inside the edges of the train...

And we're off!!!!

Oooohhh... we are a good way inside!

We learned about mining drills and stuff (with a demonstration - being told to cover our years)... and then a demo of how they shoveled the ore (by hand and then a machine - also noisy)... it was pretty cool!

And then we got pooped out this end... You see that tall pole to the left of the guide (guy dressed in black)... it is a steam whistle that signaled end of shift (one blast) or an emergency (3 blasts). Believe it or not... it was LOUDER than the rock drills!!! Super loud!!

Beary neat!!!

Sandy highly recommends this adventure!

Then we trundled down the hill and came by the core shed where all the exploratory rock cores are stored... well some of them. They used to have 16 rock core sheds... now they only have one.

But you can see the chalcopyrite in the granite... that's what they were mining. Chalcopyrite is CuFeS₂ while regular pyrite is just FeS₂.

After that... we went into the bottom level of Mill 3... and it was... impressive!

It's huge!!! And eerie... and... they've filmed lots of TV shows ("The X-Files", "MacGyver", "21 Jump Street", "Smallville", "Altered Carbon", "The Man in the High Castle", "The Last of Us") and movies here ("G.I. Joe: Snake Eyes", "Okja", "The Descendants 2", "Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed", "The Fantastic Four", and "The Age of Adaline". 

You can even see some oxidized copper staining (blue) along the rock walls.

Crazy... and this is just the lower level.

Next up is the Boom! show!

Those are some of the windows that look out onto Howe Sound.

This is a pretty famous shot from inside Mill 3... this steep staircase and then a little track with an ore cart on it... The Boom! show gave us an overview of how the ore cars dumped their contents way at the top of the building and how there was a process through which the rocks get crushed smaller and smaller and then the copper was separated out by frothing. Fascinating!

This was a GREAT adventure!!!! Sandy approves!