I haven’t been to Grand Forks for a couple of years, so I was wondering if freight service was still being provided by BNSF from the States. Didn’t the rail line through here head west of Grand Forks before dipping down into the States again?
All the little Hill intrusions into southern BC have either passed to shortlines or been abandoned. The line did indeed stay in Canada, although Grand Forks is where it dipped back into the states - the line came up at Laurier (Which, incidentally, was named by Hill for Wilfred Laurier, PM of Canada who was in favour of free trade)
Currently, the line to Laurier is abandoned from where it left the line that heads up the Columbia to Trail (still in operation as far as Fruitvale as the International Rail Road System, formerly BNSF through Salmo to Troup jct on Kootenay Lake)
The only rail left in Grand Forks is the Kettle Falls International, which serves the sawmill there. It runs up the old BNSF (GN) to the junction with the former CP, using old CP trackage in the sawmill. They’ve been talking about abandoning it, but so far they’ve kept operating a day or two of the week.
West of Grand Forks, the line dipped down into the states at Danville, with a long-abandoned spur up to the mining town of Phoenix, down to Curlew, and back into Canada just east of Midway. This avoided the summit at Eholt which CP was forced over. In fact, CP had 2 major summits between Castlegar and Midway that were pusher grades from either side that the GN avoided entirely because they were allowed to cross the border with the rivers.