Railroad accused of stranding holiday travelers
Holiday revelers in Lynden claim the Bellingham Bay & British Columbia Railroad deliberately cut off train service to force crowds to stay in Bellingham for the Fourth of July.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Rev. Steers, of Sumas, one of the many who expected to come out from Bellingham to Lynden on the afternoon of July 4th says: 'The B. B. B. C. did not run any trains out of Bellingham in the afternoon. It looked like it was afraid Bellingham would lose something. There were 100 or more would-be passengers at the depot on time for the first afternoon train scheduled. Two trains were standing in the yards. There was no bulletin of accidents or delays up in the waiting room. The ticket window was closed and we could get no satisfaction from anyone about the depot. It looked to all of us as if it was an effort to force us to remain in Bellingham.'
“It looked to all of us as if it was an effort to force us to remain in Bellingham.”
Public transit disputes between Bellingham and its smaller neighbors remain a flashpoint in Whatcom County. Whether through scheduling cuts or shifts in investment, the friction between urban hubs and outlying towns like Lynden over accessibility and economic focus is a recurring theme in local governance.
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