Was the Crowsnest Pass considered when the CPR was being built in the 1880s? To shorten the route the CPR had favored the Kicking Horse Pass over the easier Yellowhead Pass which is farther north; however, Kicking Horse until 1909 (when the spiral Tunnels were opened) involved steep grades of 4.5%. Anyone know why Crowsnest wasn’t used instead of Kicking Horse?
I’m just wondering if a major reason Canadian Pacific went through the Crowsnest Pass was to get at the minerals or ores in the West Kootenays and Boundary areas of B.C. so the Great Northern wouldn’t get at all.
CP did build a pass through Crownsest to get at the coal deposits…but I’m wondering why they didn’t build that line 15 years earlier as part of the transcon…
My vague recollection is that Crowsnest wasn’t used because:
A) Crowsnest was too close to the U.S. border for Canadian comfort then - too much fear about a possible U.S. invasion cutting the Dominion’s principal line of transportation and communications;
B) Terrain too difficult for rapid construction.
Let’s see what others with better memories or research have to add in.
Possible references:
Best one: The Crow and the Kettle
Trains, May 1968 page 37
Canadian Pacific’s other crossing of the Continental Divide
( BRITISH, CANADA, COLUMBIA, CPR, “EMMOTT, N. W.”, MOUNTAIN, PASS, TRN )
Crow’s Nest Pass
Trains, April 1942 page 14
Kettle Valley line; grain rate
( BRITISH, CANADA, COLUMBIA, CPR, CROW, “FORSYTHE, WILLIAM”, PASS, TRN )
Kettle Valley Line
Was there a connection from the U.S. to this region before the CPR started the pass? One of the reasons was to keep out the GN.
JJ Hill who was the head of the GN was a backer of CP…he was on their board and he chose Vanhorne as its GM. Thus…indirectly GN had a vest interested in seeing CP do well…if only from a common managment standpoint. Furthermore, didn’t GN interchange with CP via the Pembina branch in Manitoba? And GN had a line up from Washington into Vancouver, BC as well. Looks to me like the GN and CP were more interested in a relationship of beneficial coexistence than head to head competition.
American intrusions were indeed a driving force behind CP’s southern B.C. main line via Crowsnest Pass. Daniel Corbin, who built the Spokane International and other lines in the Inland Northwest, was also responsible for one of the earliest lines to tap the Crowsnest coal mines. His Eastern British Columbia left the present-day site of Fabro, at the apex of CP’s horseshoe on the west side of the pass, and climbed south to a mining site bearing Corbin’s name. The EBC was short-lived, but most of its right of way was resurrected decades later with heavy rail when CP decided to branch north and south from its main line to tap these coal mines for Midwest and Asian customers.
My recollection’s from Pierre Berton’s TV program “The National Dream”. There were a number of passes known over the Rocky Mountain Range; Yellowhead, Kicking Horse, Crowsnest, and several others, and several known passes over the Monashee Mountain Range including Eagle Pass which was the one chosen. But the big problem was that at the time of construction, the only known way through the Selkirk Mountain Range was the Rogers pass. So given that constraint, the shortest route through the mountains from east to west was Kicking Horse, Rogers, and Eagle passes.
Another question I have always found interesting is, why did Van Horne decide to turn southwest at Swift Current, SK toward Medicine Hat, AB, and from there northwest up to Calgary. As the crow flies, and he could go anywhere he wanted as the area was still unsettled, he could have just gone due west from Swift Current to Bassano, AB and from there to Calgary. CP eventually did build that route after 1910 on the Empress and Bassano Sub’s but I believe most of that is abandoned now.
In the 1970’s or 80’s there was a thesis, I think it was, written on this subject, but I do not have a clue how to find such a thing, as I have wanted to read it since I first heard of it. I hope you find this information helpful and I would appreciate any help on the second issue.
AgentKid
Considered? Yes. Chosen? No. Was that the right decision? For more than a century and as far as we can see into the future, absolutely yes.
Crowsnest wasn’t chosen for the transcontinental route from the start for the same reason that it is not the transcontinental route today – it added too many miles to the route. The evidence is prima facie: if Crowsnest was indeed a superior route, it would have become the preferred route for the transcontinental traffic the day it was built, but it never has served in that role.
A 4.5% grade is a costly operation, but a route that adds 2-3 crew districts to the trip (and increases fuel, locomotive, and car cost proportionally for the excess distance) is an even more costly operation, by far. Length is a cost hole that almost always can’t be dug out of.
The Crowsnest route’s construction was two-fold in rationale: First, to bar U.S. railroads from territorial incursions, not physically but commercially. A long-distance branch-line operation is rarely a commercially viable operation against a main-line route sucking the same traffic to the same market centers, because the branch line operation requires too many crew districts and too many unshared costs. Second, to access valuable traffic sources, particularly coal in the Fording District and lead-zinc at Trail, carrying the coal onto the prairies as fuel and the lead-zinc concentrates to market centers in the East. The first rationale is still viable today – the GN could not find success in its incursions into Ca
Thanks everyone for the replies… as always I appreciate the detailed and well written answers. I didn’t realize that Crowsnest would add that many more miles…I’ve read Pierre Berton’s and Omer Lavallee’s books on the subject and recall very little being written about the Crowsnest and more space devoted to why Kicking Horse was chosen over the Yellowhead Pass. Interesting stuff…
“Panamax” I’ve heard of…but what’s “Handymax”?
From James E. Vance, Jr. in “THE NORTH AMERICAN RAILROAD: Its Origin, Evolution, and Geography”, published by Johns Hopkins University Press - 1st ed. 1995:
“Thus, once the Canadian Parliament had accepted the change in prairie alignment, merely specifying that a pass no less than a hundred miles north of the United States border must be used, the company was committed to finding a route through the Rockies at no greater a grade than 2.2 percent, and in addition a similarly good alignment across the Selkirk range, which in this latitude lies across the potential route.” [“The CPR in the West”, pg. 273; emphasis added - PDN.]
"When the second crossing of the front range of the Canadian Rockies was undertaken at Crowsnest Pass, with the idea of opening up the coal mines in the vicinity, there were rivers that trenched the high-plains strata, making east-west lines awkward to build until the practice of constructing high viaducts across longitudinal valleys was developed. In the case of the Old Man River at Lethbridge, the highest railroad bridge in the British Empire resulted." [caption to photo on pg. 286; emphasis added - PDN.]
I believe that there were many grades on the Crowsnest Pass and Kettle Valley lines that exceeded the 2.2 % standard noted above, even after the later improvements in railroad construction methods - but I can’t find a reference or description to confirm that at the moment. Maybe someone who is more familiar with the line could let us know.
- Paul North.
Crowsnest has a ruling grade westward of 1.2% (or it did until the Frank Slide – the bypass increased it to 2.2%), and a ruling grade eastward of 1.6%. It’s really a very mild route, or so I was impressed when I rode it.
The Kettle Valley Railway west of Cranbrook – now that’s a different matter.
RWM
The largest common “Handy Size” ship. Handy Size is a dry bulk ship of 15,000-35,000 DWT. Handymax is a 60,000 DWT bulk ship with a draft of ~ 10.0 meters and usually five holds. Most of the grain, ore concentrate, fertilizer, and such moving in world trades moves in Handy Size and Handymax ships because they will fit just about into any port.
There’s also Suezmax, Supramax, and Capesize …
RWM
RWM - Thanks for providing and correcting the grade info on Crowsnest and Kettle Valley lines (above).
Rereading Vance yesterday, I think he had more fun and intellectual interest with the Canadian portion of the book than the rest. Although he called that “A Canadian Postscript: The Essence of a Developmental Railroad”, it’s an entire chapter - Chapter Four - of a 4-chapter book, and likewise occupies fully 1/4 of the pages (pp. 241-323 inclusive). He acknowledges that CP supported his research in many ways, including a trip over the Crowsnest line on a snowy day (pgs. xv, top, and xvi). Most notably, the Canadian experience was - and continues to be - an almost pure “laboratory experiment” example of his thesis in application. Briefly, Canada’s railroad expansion was uncomplicated by the Civil War era’s “North vs. South” political maneuvering and other factors that apparently motivated much of the route selection and location process in the U.S. - “Which parallel do we build along ?” And, being about 20 years later than the U.S. effort, as the Second Transcontinental Railroad the CP could take advantage of the knowledge and insights that the U.S. had to acquire the hard way. Plus, the developmental expansion continued almost right up until the publication of his book - the Northwest extension ines and Tumbler Ridge branch, etc.
Not important - but just thought I’d put that out here as something I noticed.
- Paul North.
Paul, the lines which you suspected were in excess of 2.2% were probably the branches to Corbin (2.9%), Kimberley (2.6%), and Trail (3.6%). RWM’s assessment of traffic via Crowsnest is correct. I can see UP’s ex-SI main behind my house and about the only loads that head north to Canada are miniscule bits of merchandise on one of the daily manifests, or sheets of milled steel headed from Oregon to a pipe manufacturing plant in southwest Alberta. Other than that, UP northbounds consist of empty centerbeams, boxcars, and tankers, plus empty unit grain and potash. Historically, Crowsnest Pass was part of a joint SI-CP-Soo route that competed against GN, MILW, and NP for passenger business between Spokane and the Twin Cities, and more recently a corridor for some northern U.S. grain to reach Pacific ports via a short detour in and out of Canada. At one time, there were loaded coal trains heading east over Crowsnest to Nanticoke, Ontario, (mentioned in my story “Crowsnest, Cranbrook and Coal” in the March and April 1991 Railfan & Railroad), but I recall reading somewhere that this may have diminished or died off completely. A couple months ago, a friend in Cranbrook told me that the remaining Crowsnest mines were bracing for a serious downturn in shipments due to a big drop in steel production in China and Japan.
Now that everybody’s computers seem to be up and running again, I can finish off my posts to this thread:
Bruce -
Yes, I’m pretty sure the steep grades I was thinking of are on the branch to Trail. I’m almost certain that the N. W. Emmott article titled “The Crow and the Kettle” mentioned it, esp. the smelter at Trail with its tall smokestack to make sure the pollutants got all the way to the U.S. ! [:-,]
Also, back in the 1960s Model Railroader had a good beginner-level project article on scratch-building a model of CPR wooden ore car as used on the Trail branch. One of the protoype photos that accompanied the article showed the remains of an ore car with the caption to the effect that “many a trip down the steep grades ended in an tangled heap of ore and timbers”, or similar. Since that was one of my first scratch-building attempots, every word of that article left an impression on me:
30-ton timber ore car
.
Neat photos ! Wow, that spur is steep - sure there wasn’t a roller-coaster there in the summer, or toboggan or bobsled runs in the winter ? Maybe now since the track’s been lifted ?
The before-and-after of the 36" mine line and the switch and spur heading upgrade and their removal is interesting.
Funky alignment in the spur just above/ beyond that switch with the yellow target, too. Probably left over from when a sharper turnout had been in there before.
Quite a difference in the running board heights of the F-M over the RS18, too.
Thanks for sharing !
- Paul North.
Paul’s mention of The Crow and the Kettle brought to mind the BEAUTIFUL art/railfan/historical book “The Crow and the Kettle” by J.F. Garden, Footprint Publishing 2004. And yes there is a nod to TRAINS Magazine from whom they received authorization to use the tittle. A truly wonderful book. There are track profiles of the whole line on the inside covers of the book but I do not know how to covert those to grade percentages.
As I am more of an anecdote than a numbers/rivet counter person two things stick out in my mind from that book. After the Spiral Tunnels were built with their 2.2% grade the steepest “mainline” grade in Canada then became the Chute Lake Hill down to Lake Okanogan, NE of Penticton BC on the Kettle Valley Division. But it was less than the grade at Trail BC.
That grade was insane, including street running in Trail. There is a picture in the book with seven first generation loco’s strapped up to handle 36 loads. That lead and zinc must be some valuable commodities. The line down Chute Lake Hill was abandoned in the late 60"s
AgentKid