Cloverdale British Columbia - Robert Ashton's love for this region's former electric railway began while growing up in Vancouver's Kerrisdale neighbourhood.
 
Ashton was a frequent Interurban passenger, tagging along when his dad went to meet ships arriving at New Westminster's river port.
 
And with an aunt and uncle living in Steveston, he also rode the Interurban to the Richmond neighbourhood.
 
But the electric railway era ended in 1958 when car No. 1225 pulled into Marpole Station carrying the last load of paying customers. Buses had made the Interurban unnecessary.
 
Many, including Ashton, lamented the loss of the region's light rail line.
 
Ashton spent many years reliving his boyhood experiences by visiting Interurban No. 1223 on display at the Burnaby Village Museum.
 
Before he retired from teaching, he planned class field trips to the museum, turning his students over to the docents while he went and sat in the tram car.
 
"I'd just sit in 1223 and think about what we lost," Ashton says. "We had a great public transit system and we lost it."
 
Ashton believed Interurban No. 1223 was the last car remaining in the Lower Mainland, so he was thrilled to learn in the mid-1990s that a group in Steveston was restoring Interurban No. 1220.
 
The North Delta resident volunteered to help, and stayed on for seven years.
 
But when talk of bringing an Interurban car to this city started, Ashton opted to help the local effort instead.
 
He became the Fraser Valley Heritage Railway Society's first chair and was soon dispatched to Perris, Calif. (north of San Diego) to check the condition of Interurban No. 1225.
 
It took the society nearly five years to raise the $200,000 needed to repatriate the tram car from the Orange Empire Railway Museum.
 
Ashton made a second trip to Perris in August 2005 to accompany the tram on its journey to Surrey.
 
Since then, he's been one of a handful of volunteers who spend four hours a day, three days a week rehabilitating the tram to the condition it was in when it rolled out of the factory in 1913.
 
They plan to paint it the red and cream livery that adorned Interurban cars during the 1940s.
 
The goal is to operate the tram as a heritage tourist attraction on a stretch of Southern Rail track running from the old Sullivan Station at 152 Street and 64 Avenue to Cloverdale.
 
"The only thing I wanted to do when I started, was to drive this," says the society's vice-chair, glancing up at the work in progress.
 
The Fraser Valley Heritage Railway Society hosts its first open house of the year 18 May 2008 from 12-4 p.m.
 
The society's rail barn is located at 152 Street and 64 Avenue.
 
Author unknown.