Staff at British Columbia Rapid Transit Company recently marked a significant construction milestone at SkyTrain’s Operations and Maintenance Centre, near Edmonds Station.

We are undergoing the largest upgrade of the original facility, built over 40 years ago. With this upgrade, we’re expanding maintenance space with a new 55,000-square-foot building.

This will house an upgraded shop for the guideway and rail-borne equipment teams, dedicated staff offices and amenities, and additional train maintenance bays specifically designed for our longer Mark V trains. We’ve also extended our cleaning and inspection building to accommodate the new trains.

The massive new vehicle maintenance shop has been built in two phases — the east side of the building is already occupied and being utilized by SkyTrain staff.

The final beam on the steel frame for the west part of the facility was recently laid and a “steel-topping ceremony” was held to commemorate this milestone.

A construction tradition

A steel-topping ceremony is a customary event in the construction industry.

It is held in conjunction with the last steel beam placed atop the structure’s steel skeleton — a significant milestone in the construction process.

The ceremony typically involves signing the beam and attaching a flag to it before it is craned into place.

Upgrading SkyTrain’s 40-year-old operations and maintenance centre

Before becoming SkyTrain’s Operations and Maintenance Centre, the site was an abandoned gravel yard with plenty of room for growth.

At opening, the SkyTrain had just one line that operated between Waterfront Station and New Westminster Station, with about 100 cars in the fleet. The total length of the system? Just 21.4 kilometres.

You can see the vast empty space at the Operations and Maintenance Centre with just a handful of tracks needed for storage and maintenance.

Today, the SkyTrain operates a fleet with four times the number of cars (and 235 to come!) The total length of the SkyTrain network (Expo, Millennium and Canada Lines) is 79.6 kilometres — and it’s set to get even longer.

The Surrey Langley SkyTrain extension of the Expo Line from King George Station along Fraser Highway to the new Langley City Centre Station will add 16 kilometres to the SkyTrain network. The Broadway Subway will extend Millennium Line VCC–Clark Station along Broadway to Arbutus, adding 5.7 kilometres.

That means by the end of this decade, the SkyTrain network will be more than 100 kilometres in length — more than four times longer than when it first opened!

SkyTrain Expansion Program

We’ve embarked on an unprecedented expansion and upgrades for our SkyTrain system to make SkyTrain service more available to more communities across Metro Vancouver.

This colossal task includes the upgrade of existing infrastructure across the SkyTrain network – from our operational facilities to the stations themselves; a vast suite of technological and power upgrades required to deliver expanded service; and new operations, storage, and maintenance facilities to support the next stage of SkyTrain’s continued evolution along with the region.