Banff Springs Hotel

Just watched a video on YouTube about the hotel built by the Canadian Pacific Railway dose anyone know anything about it, the video was just talking about it being haunted nothing else I was just curious.

Thanks Chuck

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It’s a very busy, expensive grand hotel. I have been by both this and the Chateau Lake Louise in both summer and winter and they always seem to be full.

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Van Horne picked the location. The original hotel was built of wood, and the current construction dates to the latter 1920s.

The Canadian Pacific bought up the ex-Grand Trunk (after 1923 Canadian National) grand hotels at the turn of this century, then renamed the whole hotel division ā€œFairmontā€ after an American company they bought in 1999. I wonder if they’ll rename things again in the wake of the ā€˜Trump unpleasantness’…

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It wasn’t unusual for railroads, and even interurban lines, to build a resort or some other attraction to help generate passenger traffic. C&O with The Greenbriar at White Sulphur Springs, Great Northern and the Izaak Walton Inn, Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island (Michigan Central and GR&I), The Breakers, Florida East Coast and the Santa Fe had several run by the Fred Harvey franchise.

Postwar Tourism by Paul Malon, on Flickr

Regards, Ed

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The B&O Historical Society recently published in its magazine ā€˜The Sentinel’ a multi-part series on the hotels that the B&O had built and run over its history. I can not find a link to it.

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Even the B&LE owned an amusement park at Conneaut.

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Some issues of the Sentinel are available on CD, so if you have volume and issue cites, this might be useful ($8 to the organization seems reasonable to me!):

https://borhs.org/Shopping/The_Sentinel.html

They also have print back issues, but apparently well prior to the date(s) of the hotels article, instead of summarizing the issue contents, they went to a helpful ā€˜click on the image and see some low-resolution pages’ including the table of contents inside the front cover…

Here are a couple of historical references in the meantime:

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I did not know the C&O build the Greenbriar, or other railroads had hotels. thank you all for your input I have learned so much on this forum.

Chuck

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The Greenbriar is here in West Virginia I had no idea it was because of the C&O


Chuck

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I’ve stayed at some of the other Canadian RR hotels: the Royal York in Toronto; the Queen Elizabeth in Montreal; and the Nova Scotian in Halifax. The Royal York was connected to the station by a tunnel under the street, and the others were built over the station.

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Back in the days of the Chessie System - a perk of Senior Management was a week’s stay at the Greenbriar for their yearly physical.

One wing of the Greenbriar, during the Cold War period was constructed to be a home for the government of the USA in case of a nuclear attack.

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I’m tempted to ask if part of the physical at the Greenbriar included seeing how many rounds of golf each exec could play in a week. But I won’t.

Speaking of railroad-connected hotels, here’s a nominee : I’ll include the Hotel Cleveland, attached to the Terminal Tower and CUT. It had a railroad station and a light rail line in its basement.





While this hotel (1917) was not built or operated by a railroad, it was certainly in a building owned by companies controlled by the Van Sweringens. In its previous incarnations it was the Sheraton Cleveland, then the Renaissance Cleveland; last year it reopened again as the Hotel Cleveland. When the CUT was in operation it was an indoor stroll from the train to one’s room in this classic hotel.

Railroad hotels appeal to me. I’ve stayed at a number of them out west, as well as the Royal York. I thought the Empress Hotel in Victoria, BC was as impressive as any public building. CP sure owned some palaces.

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Midland Mike that is so cool you got to stay in all those railroad hotel’s that would be cool to see the train under the street.

BaltACD that would be great to get to stay there for a week I have heard about the bunker it is now decommissioned and you can tour it.

NKP guy it’s ok go ahead ask now I’m curious was golf part of it? :rofl: the Hotel Cleveland looks like a beautiful place.

Thank you all Chuck

Never having achieved a position that qualified as Senior Management, I have no idea.

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I think it was one of the Green Frog videos that had some Emery Goulash film of a couple of Chessie System General Motors Executive Conference special trains run from Detroit to the Greenbrier on May, 25-29, 1969. There was about twenty cars on each train and a steam heater car at each end. I have a couple menus from on board I’ll have to scan soon.

Cheers, Ed

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That would be cool thanks Ed

Chuck