The Weird, Wonderful Tale of the Whistler Train Wreck

In 1956, a train crashed just outside the town of Whistler and somehow the crushed-up train cars ended up in the forest, yards away from the tracks and each other. For years, this site was a mystery. How did the train cars get there? If they barreled through the trees, surely the forest would have been broken up. But no, there was no sign of the wreck, except, of course, for the smashed-up cars themselves.

Recently, some Whistler natives stepped forward to solve the mystery. Turns out the wrecked cars were full of lumber and the train company couldn’t get the mess to budge from their tracks, so they hired the local logging company to bring in their equipment, pry apart the cars, then dragged them up the tracks and into the forest away from the site of the original wreck (which is why you don’t see more forest damage where they came to rest).

Since then, the wreck has been stumbled on and stumbled on again, eventually becoming something of a legend. These days, it’s part art gallery, covered in ever-changing graffiti, part mountain bike park (with intense jumps built up and around the cars), and part savvy tourist curiosity.

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If you want to go to the Whistler Train Wreck, the city was building a bridge that will cross over to it from the Trash Trail when I was there and by the time this posts, it should be ready for foot traffic.

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(Psst, this post may contain affiliate links, which means if you purchase something through one of my links, I get a commission at no extra cost to you.)

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All photos taken with my Sony a6000.

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