Frankly Speaking

This photo, published in Floyd Yeats' Canadian Pacific's Big Hill (1985), is from the Soole collection at the National Railway Museum in York, England. It shows CPR's The Dominion westbound, about to enter the Upper Spiral Tunnel. Portions of the lower grade are shown in the background. Three Canadian Pacific railroaders died at 1 a.m. Monday, when their 112-car grain train derailed on what railroaders know as “The Big Hill,” between the summit of Kicking Horse Pass on the B.C.-Alberta boundary, and the town of Field, 10 miles to the west. News reports and photos of the scene show unbelievable destruction. The lead locomotive apparently went off a bridge into the Kicking Horse River, and at least a Union Pacific trailing locomotive and 99 cars piled up behind it. Only 13 cars and the rear end locomotive stayed on the tracks. A Transportation Safety Board preliminary report Tuesday indicated that the train had been stopped for a crew change on the upper part of th...

Sunday’s fatal crash involving a car and a train at the Langley Bypass crossing was the second in just over three years on the Canadian Pacific rail corridor to take the lives of elderly Langley residents. In September, 2015, an ambulance was hit by a train at the Crush Crescent crossing, killing the 87-year-old patient inside. Sunday’s terrible tragedy involving a car and a train needn’t have happened. The crash, detailed in this Langley Times story https://www.langleytimes.com/news/watch-two-seniors-reportedly-hit-and-killed-by-train-in-langley/ , took place on a sunny December morning. The victims, a 90-year-old man and an 88-year-old woman, were in a vehicle that somehow became stranded on the Langley Bypass crossing. The crew of the westbound CN coal train had no ability to stop the train, which would have weighed in excess of 10,000 tons. The train pushed the car the couple were riding in close to a kilometre down the tracks before it stopped. The couple were identified on M...

Joe Smuin explains an aspect of Kettle Valley Railway history to an attentive group on Sunday. A ceremony was held on the KVR grade above the Coquihalla highway to mark the 100th anniversary of the opening of the rail line between Brookmere and Hope through Coquihalla Pass. A group of rail history and outdoors enthusiasts marked an important 100 th anniversary Sunday, with a commemorative “last spike” ceremony. The event was organized by my friend, longtime Canadian Pacific Railway railfan Brian Peters. July 31, 1916 was the day the Coquihalla line of the Kettle Valley Railway opened for traffic. The construction and opening of the railway was the final step in a lengthy political and economic campaign to link the Okanagan, Boundary and Kootenay areas of B.C. with the coast by rail. The campaign also sought to prevent American railroads (specifically the Great Northern Railway, operated by Canadian J.J. (Jim) Hill) from reaping most of the profits from the mines, smelters...