Peninsula Line

The Peninsula Line (Line 12) is an electrified 10.7 mile railway line of the British Columbia Railway (BC Rail) on Vancouver Island running from Sayward to Sidney. Operationally, the line is isolated from the rest of BC Rail's network on Vancouver Island, but BC Rail has running rights into Victoria over Line 4 of the Victoria Metro, to which it connects at Sayward, to allow for movement of locomotives between the Peninsula Line and the BC Rail shops in Victoria.

History
The Vancouver Island Railway (VIR) opened its first line, running 18.4 miles from Victoria to Patricia Bay, in 1901, as the second of three rail lines to be opened on the Saanich Peninsula, the first having been the Victoria & Sidney Railway's line opened in 1893. VIR's original station in Victoria was located adjacent to the shops, some distance from the V&S station; in 1920, the three railways serving Victoria - the VIR, the BC Electric Railway, and the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway - opened Victoria Union Station.

In 1919 the VIR bought the V&S, incorporating the 3.2 mile Bazan–Sidney section of the V&S main line into its own line; at that time, the original Bazan–Patricia Bay portion of the VIR mainline became known as the Patricia Bay Branch. When the V&S had been a subsidiary of the Great Northern Railway, it had operated a Vancouver–Victoria passenger train via a rail ferry running between Sidney and Port Guichon, Delta. The VIR continued to operate this train in conjunction with the GN, discontinuing it in 1953.

With the opening of Victoria International Airport at Patricia Bay in 1941, the Patricia Bay branch was closed. The British Columbia Railway absorbed the VIR in 1960, officially naming the line Peninsula Line; local passenger service on the line was discontinued in 1961, after which the line was almost freight-only, handling all of the freight traffic moving between the Lower Mainland and the South Island, and some amount of local freight from industries along the line.

By 1990 the amount of local freight traffic was barely enough to justify continued operations, and there was pressure from various sides in the community and in Parliament to discontinue the service and to shift the Island–Mainland freight traffic to the E&N via Nanaimo. In 2008, the first of several studies was undertaken, considering abandonment of the line; the result was to not abandon but to continue local freight operations as required, and to undertake further studies on the possibility of creating a second dedicated commuter line for Greater Victoria.

In 2012, a preliminary plan was unveiled, envisioning the conversion of the section from Union Station to Sayward in the same way as the BCER (by then BC Hydro Railway) line had been converted into Victoria Metro Line 1, and transferring it to Hydro for operation as a new Metro line, whilst BC Rail would retain the section from Sayward to Sidney for freight use, which would include the development of new "green" industrial parks at Sayward and Michell; this would eliminate the many complaints about freight trains running through residential areas. Construction of the new industrial park at Sayward began in 2016, along with a new rail freight terminal for Greater Victoria, and the line north of there was gradually refurbished and electrified; this work was completed in the autumn of 2017, and work on the Michell industrial park was started in the spring of 2018.

Final planning work for the Victoria–Sayward commuter line was begun in the summer of 2013, and construction was begun in 2015. Ownership of the right-of-way was transferred to the City of Victoria, and operations along the new line are contracted out to BC Hydro as Victoria Metro Line 4; service began on 1 March 2020. BC Rail retains nighttime running rights over the transferred section to allow for the movement of locomotives to and from the otherwise isolated line.

Services
Service on the (truncated) Peninsula Line is restricted to freight only, moving goods between the Mainland and Vancouver Island via the Sidney–Port Guichon ferry.

Route
A grey background indicates a closed (transferred) section of the line; italic text indicates a closed station or closed connection.