Matthew Robson has been riding the rails for a decade – and couldn’t be happier. A conductor with Southern Railway of B.C. and a documentary filmmaker, the Vancouver resident will be attending the 2016 Vancouver Train Expo this weekend at the Forum building at the Pacific National Exhibition. Record reporter Theresa McManus had a chance to talk to him about his cool jobs and the train expo.
When did your interest in trains begin?
“It probably began when I was just a baby. I have an older brother. My dad got him into trains and had a model train set. We have family pictures of me at probably three months old watching the model trains go around with my older brother and dad. We grew up about a block away from the infamous Arbutus line in Vancouver. We got to see the train go by once every day so that probably fueled the passion as well.”
You are a conductor for Southern Railway of British Columbia. Tell me about that.
“I have been with the company for 10 years now. I got hired on in June of 2006. I didn’t expect to be here that long but 10 years have gone pretty quick. I got hired on as a brakeman. I have been a conductor now for five years. He pretty much is responsible for the train. You have a crew that’s three people – an engineer, a conductor and a brakeman. He is responsible for the safe movement of the train. He is kind of like the boss, deals with all the paperwork and the yardmasters, is in charge of getting the rail cars delivered to their appropriate locations.”
Do you work in New Westminster?
“A lot of the time I work in New Westminster. I’m all over the place. A daily shift can be quite unpredictable. It’s wherever the work takes us. For the most part I’m in the New West part under the Queensborough Bridge. We do go to the Quay quite a bit, and Queensborough. A lot of our traffic is over on Annacis Island. Our head office is in New Westminster so I begin and end my day in New West every day.”
What do you like about your job?
“The thing I like most about it is it is different every day. You are always doing something different, you get to work outdoors, which is my other favourite thing. You are physically active. It’s almost like an adventure. You are riding off the side of rail cars and travelling on a train. I really like that aspect of it, the travel aspect – I know we don’t go very far. One of my favourite jobs we used to do was out between Abbotsford and Chilliwack. You got to go for a nice train ride. That was my favourite thing that I got to do.”
Have you had scary incidents on the rails?
“Not in New Westminster, luckily, knock on wood. Within my first year of working on the railway we hit a pickup truck in Langley. A couple years after that we had a car hit the side. It takes quite a while for the train to stop. On the day of that first incident we didn’t even have a very big train but it took us 500 or 600 feet to stop while doing 30 miles per hour.”
You are also a documentary filmmaker. Can you elaborate?
“That kind of started with the Arbutus line as well. Me and my brother growing up, they announced in the late 90s that they were going to abandon the line. My brother and I decided we should try and film it and make a documentary on it. We were just kids, we didn’t know what we were doing but I always liked that idea. Later, when they announced the Royal Hudson was going to be back in service in 2007 – our family rode on that train every summer so the Royal Hudson was a special memory for our family –so to hear that they were going to bring it back to steam, I was inspired to make a documentary about the event happening on its first run of its return to steam. I love photography and filming. I was inspired to keep doing it and capturing the different moments around B.C.”
The Vancouver Train Expo is coming up – will you be there?
“Yes. Our company, it’s a full proprietorship I have called Elevation Media, will have a booth there selling our documentaries. We have a new documentary out on the railway I work for on our Fraser Valley operation so we will be debuting that this weekend and have our other movies for sale.”
Do you have any documentaries related to New Westminster?
“I have one when the Royal Hudson ran on our line in 2009. It started in New Westminster. We picked up all our passengers in New Westminster and took the train out to Cloverdale and back. We did a documentary on those runs. I, in fact, was part of the crew that operated the Royal Hudson the one day. That was a very cool experience, a very special project to me as well.”
Why should people go to the Vancouver Train Expo?
“It’s a very fascinating event. There’s something for everyone, old and young. For kids, there’s Lego trains, Thomas is there. There are mini rail rides for everyone to go on. There’s a lot of model railroaders there. What they do is really artwork in a sense. It’s not like plastic trains. They build these mountains and hand-crafted trees and painted little people on their trains. To see these things are really works of art. A lot of hard work goes into them. It’s very cool to see these things.”
The Vancouver Train Expo, Metro Vancouver’s biggest train show, takes place on Saturday, Nov. 5 from 10 a.m. to 6 pm. and Sunday, Nov. 6 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For info, visit www.vancouvertrainexpo.ca.
