The small yellow and white china saucer likely had a silver spoon nestled on it by locals or city folk as it rattled and rolled up the Sea to Sky Corridor.
Though it is a little worse for wear, it has also likely outlived some of the men in smart suits and women in dresses with fine hats who used it aboard passenger trains.
Recently, while digging a trench, a contractor upgrading the electrical supply to the ex-BC Rail Motive Power 2 shop in Squamish's railyard unearthed some old items.
Kirby Read, a maintenance worker with the West Coast Railway Association, was working nearby when the trench was being dug and saw that there were artifacts in the layers of fill and gravel.
He asked the crew to keep them to the side, which they did.
In addition to brass bearings and old beer and soda bottles, there was the broken Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE) china plate.
The saucer was made in 1952, according to the stamp on the back of it.
As for why the items were buried, Read notes that there wasn't recycling back in the day and so it was likely an efficient way to deal with what was seen as trash.
"Honestly, there's probably so much stuff buried back in those days," he said.
Singh Biln, a director with the West Coast Railway Association, which operates the Railway Museum of British Columbia, has the plate and plans to display it at the museum.
According to local history passed on to Biln by former long-time local Trevor Mills, the PGE — subsequently BC Rail — was established in 1912 when it took over the Howe Sound & Northern Railway’s nine miles of logging railway in Squamish.
Construction started northward soon after, reaching Clinton in 1915 and Quesnel in 1921.
The railway operated mixed freight and passenger services from Squamish to Quesnel for the next 40 years.
Passengers arrived at the Squamish dock by steamship and boarded passenger coaches to head north, hauled by steam locomotives, according to Mills.
Rainbow Lodge in Whistler (then known as Alta Lake) provided meal service for PGE passengers, until it was sold in 1948.
Then, PGE turned a couple of coaches into diner cars and began offering on-board meal service complete with china cups, saucers and plates crafted by Medalta Pottery of Medicine Hat, Alta. (Its manufacturing complex is now a museum.)
The locomotive-hauled passenger trains stopped operating in 1956.
The plate is missing a piece, which Biln says he wishes he could find, however the trench was refilled and no one is sure exactly the spot where the plate piece would have been.
"The PGE dishes are quite rare and collectable because of small quantities made for the small Railway. Not many have survived," Biln said.
**Please note that this story was corrected after it was first posted to say Motive Power 2 shop. Originally, it said Motor Power 2 shop, which was incorrect.
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