Stanley Park Train will not return for Easter

This photo from the City of Vancouver's website shows the Easter Bunny posing with the train in Stanley Park.

Vancouver’s beloved and beleaguered Stanley Park Train will not be in operation this coming Easter, or any time soon after that, the park board announced Monday.

“Our staff have been working tirelessly to get the train back on track for Easter and we recognize how disappointing this news is for so many people and their families,” Vancouver Park Board General Manager Steve Jackson said in a statement.

The vintage locomotive attraction has been on and off the tracks for various reasons in recent years, including mechanical issues, the COVID-19 pandemic and coyote concerns.

Tickets for the popular train sold out within a day ahead of the park’s annual Bright Nights holiday fundraiser, but thousands were ultimately unable to take a ride when the train halted partway through the season and never returned.

That stoppage was after a train operator fell ill from inhaling dangerous fumes coming from the exhaust.

“Since that time, staff have been working with the City of Vancouver engineering to explore modifications to our aging locomotives. The hope there, was that that would reduce emissions exposure to our staff as well as the public,” said Steve Jackson, the general manager for the Vancouver Park Board, Monday.

“Unfortunately, due to our most recent testing, it isn’t showing that that modification was successful. Our emission levels are still higher than where we’d like them to be.”

Jackson said the Park Board has lost approximately $3-million attempting to repair and operate the train over the past five years, with the costs to electrify the train estimated to reach between $1.5 - $2.5-million.

“Ultimately it will be the board’s decision to determine where this sits in their priorities. From there, we’ll have to figure out whether we’ve got the financial means within our budgets to reprioritize, or potentially seek endorsement from council to allocate some capital funds to this asset,” he said.

The park board is “open to all options” for funding, said Jackson, including sponsorship. Staff will perform an analysis of potential paths forward for the attraction which will be presented to park board commissioners in June.

“I think we do need to be focusing on a longer-term solution that makes this a reliable operation, [so] that we’re not continuing to be in front of these cameras explaining why we aren’t operating,” he said.

Jackson said the board has had an “incredible response” from the public in the last few years each time the train has swung back into action, noting how tickets for the park’s Bright Nights event sold out “just as fast” as tickets for the mammoth Taylor Swift concerts late last year.

“It says a lot about the public’s interest and love for this site,” he said.