Is this line double or single track?
If you mean the loops at Yoho, the line is single track as I recall, although I think leading up to the tunnels the tracks have some long passing sidings so it might look like double track.
Single track.
Thanks both of you.
The east approach to the summit is 2 main tracks, Lake Louise to Stephen. The two tracks separate and follow different elevations much of the way.
Hi,
I’d like to learn more about this tunnel. Can someone tell me about it.
It starts up.
Then it goes around.
Then it’s lower.
And there are two of it.
you can google Spiral Tunnels Canadian Pacific and alot will show up…wikapedia has a good article on the subject. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any really good pics.
This shows the tunnels, looking eastward. The tunnels are the dashed lines. The summit of Kicking Horse Pass is in the background. Type “Spiral Tunnels” into Google image search and more show up.
RWM
Having begun my RR engineering in the days of transits, 100 foot steel tapes (called chains) and Wye or Dumpy levels I can only imagine the difficulties in establishing alignment and grade as construction progressed within these tunnels. Especially since the surveying equipment I used was superior to that at the time these tunnels were built.
I am reminded of the old surveyors tale about how tunnels were built in China during that era; " you put 10,000 coolies on each side of the mountain and if they met in the middle you had your tunnel, if not you had two tunnels".
Somebody once described the construction of this line by the CPR’s founders as being so bold a venture as to continue progressing on the plains to the east, “while the surveyors were looking to see if they even had a pass”. Unfortunately, I can’t remember who that was - I wouldn’t rule out John G. Kneiling, though.
Re: 2nd paragraph: [(-D] - haven’t heard (or read) that one before. Reminds me of stories I heard about how during WW II, when Japanese attacks blasted boulders down onto the airfields that were being used by the Allied Air Forces (US), those boulders were then removed - lots of Chinese with hammers going “plink, plink, plink” all through the night is how it got done.
RWM - nice depiction ! Better than some model RR layouts. Thanks for sharing.
- Paul North.
Predates Kneiling by over one century. John A. Macdonald might have been one of the first to say this.
RWM
You can see the tunnel on the left from a turnout on the side of the highway (Canada 1); I was not able to see the other tunnel from the highway, but I did get pictures of a short train as it entered and as it exited the tunnel on the left six years ago.
For those who do not want to look it up, either via Google or in Trains (back in the fifties). Here is a brief description. The highway pretty much uses the original railroad grade. The CP wanted to ascend to Kicking Horse Pass on a more gentle grade, and the only way it work the problem out was by having the track double back on itself three times–and it had to bore the two tunnels do that because the valley was not wide enough to have all the track out in the open. The turn of the first and the third double-back is inside a tunnel. I don’t think that the CP used coolies to bore the tunnels. It is quite an engineering feat.
Johnny
I’ m not sure they used Chinese labor as this thing was build in the early 1900s…According to what I’ve read the Central Pacific’s Summit Tunnel was the last to be excavated using hand labor…tunnel boring machines…albeit primitive ones were used thereafter. Apparently these machines were even available to the Central Pacific; however Charles Crocker (who was responsible for its construction) didn’t want to use it…preferring the proven Chinese labor.
Yes - whoever it is that I’m recalling said that, the context was clearly one of a historical look back. But I didn’t know that any of the CPR"s “principals”, officials, or participants had ever actually recognized, stated, or admitted that was how they had temporized while looking for a pass to use - interesting.
- PDN.
Hand drilling was the typical practice in tunnel boring and hard-rock mining into the 1890s, and persisted in smaller hard-rock mines into the 1920s. Higher labor costs after WWII finally ended the practice. Coal mining mechanized later, with some mines using almost no mechanized coal drilling, cutting, or loading until the 1950s.
A Tunnel Boring Machine by definition is full-face for the bore. TBMs were tried way back into the 19th century, but did not find technical success until about 25 years ago. The first successful machine-aided tunneling tool was the steam- or air-powered drill, which appeared in the 1840s – steam drills were very quickly supplanted by compressed air, and vanished. None of the numerous power drill designs were truly successful until the Leyner drill, which appeared in the 1890s in Colorado. Leyner sold his patents and his company to Ingersoll-Rand in 1912.
U.S. railway practice preferred to advance tunnels full-face, using drills mounted on a “jumbo,” which is a movable, multilevel platform that enables workmen and drills to attack the full face, or using two or three narrow benches, one at base-of-arch height and another half-way down the vertical. European practice normally was not full-face and either drove an initial heading at the top of the arch and followed behind breaking down a lower bench, or sometimes drove two initial headings at the base of the arch and worked upward subsequently, or in very difficult gr
Actually, my point was that the tunnels were bored as they had been planned; there was little deviation, if any, from what the engineers had wanted.
Johnny
Johnny -
I’m not seeing the second / middle double-back - which would be out in the open, not in a tunnel - in the accompanying depiction. Neither Google Maps nor MircoSoft LiveEarth show the tracks in their “Map” or “Road” views (respectively), and neither has enough fine resolution to see the line in the “Aerial” photo views. Further, I don’t have my copy of William D. Middleton’s Landmarks on (of ?) the Iron Road handy. So can you provide some further guidance as to where that middle double-back is ? Tha
Does the grade continue inside the tunnels or is it more or less level in there?
Short answer is yes, the grade continues.
Long answer is:
The grade is compensated for curvature on this line. Various railways have different compensation formulas but typically it is on the order of 5-10% reduction, depending upon the degree of curvature. (Some mountain lines have no compensation for curvature – I believe the SP line over the Tehachapis is an example.)
There are variations from the nominal ruling grade on this line in the tunnels and outside the tunnels – almost no mountain grade is “continuous” but has many flatter spots than the nominal ruling grade, because of geography. I don’t have the track charts at hand, but last time I rode through them on the head-end of a train, it seemed to me there was no significant reduction of grade in the tunnels.
RWM