The other Royal visit to train 014 and SkyTrain’s influence abroad
In 1986, during Expo ’86, King Charles III (then Prince) and his then wife, Princess Diana paid a visit to Patterson Station in Burnaby to see the new rapid transit system. They boarded car 014, dubbed the “Spirit of Canada”, and made history as the first visiting monarch to use the transit system.
However, this visit overshadows another royal visit and one that had substantial ramifications for the country the monarch heralded from.
On May 8th, 1989, Thailand’s Princess Chulabhorn paid a visit to Vancouver and rode on the very same car the Prince and Princess of Wales rode three years prior. Ten years later, Thailand’s capital city, Bangkok would open its BTS Skytrain.
However, unlike the Vancouver SkyTrain (note the upper case ‘T’ in our name), Bangkok’s system did not use trains from Bombardier and instead its initial set were from Siemens. The reason for the name was that the original system proposal was the Lavalin Skytrain, as SNC Lavalin itself was responsible for the construction of Vancouver’s system. This project was cancelled in 1992 officially due to financial reasons, but it was suggested politics played a role in its demise.
For whatever reason, despite SNC Lavalin’s lack of involvement in the succeeding project, the name “Skytrain” stuck and in 1999, the Bangkok Mass Transit System officially opened and named as “BTS Skytrain”. Perhaps the Princess just liked the name? Who knows.
This was originally posted to cohost.org/VancouverTransit.
