The E&NR roundhouse in Vic West (sketched in 2003) is, to the best of my knowledge, the last historically significant structure in the Capital Region not to have been scooped into Victoria's net of benign heritage policies and relatively sympathetic owners. It sits in a rather derelict state on its overgrown railyard, one of the last industrial patches in a part of Victoria (the Songhees lands) that has been redeveloped with condo towers in the past 20 years. (Vancouver's Canadian Pacific Railway roundhouse on False Creek, built like this one in the late 1880s, is restored as the centrepiece of a community centre.)

The railway's original passenger terminus at the time of the driving of the last spike, by Sir John A. Macdonald in August, 1886, was at "Russell's Station" at Catherine Street and Esquimalt Road, just a block away from the roundhouse. The downtown Store Street station, completed following the erection of the first Johnson Street bridge in 1887, survived until 1972 when it was demolished to improve automobile access to the bridge. The Janion Hotel, built next door to it in 1891, survives as an abandoned hulk on the edge of Victoria's beautifully restored downtown.

The E&NR survives today in a kind of time warp, with a VIA Rail gas car chugging daily from Esquimalt northwards up the Island to Courtenay. The freight part of the operation is now apparently known as E&N Railfreight.

So what's happening here? More information to follow, no doubt.

Three of the many websites with historical and current information on the railway.