Since moving to Northwest Montana in 2011, I’ve turned the CP’s secondary main line through British Columbia’s southern interior into a pet photography project of sorts and with its great scenery and diverse operations it’s a worthy one. Stretching from the plains of Alberta to British Columbia’s Kootenay Rockies, the southern main line lives in relative obscurity compared to its more famous counterpart to the north, the original main. N.W. Emmott perhaps best summed up the plight of the southern route in a 1968 story in Trains titled “The Crow and the Kettle.”
“The main line gets all the publicity,” he wrote. “It had the final spike, the big engines with the King’s crown embossed on the running boards, and the name trains. It has the spiral tunnels and its trains stop at Banff and Yoho National Parks to allow passengers to view the magnificent peaks. The world has been flooded with its advertisements; and Rupert Brooke, the doomed and glamorous poet who made some corner of a foreign field forever England, celebrated it in an essay that is still anthologized after 60 years.”
"Two hundred miles further south forming the convoluted hypotenuse of the rough triangle whose right angle is the main line between Medicine Hat, Alta. and Vancouver, B.C., is another line of the Canadian Pacific which has remained unsung and unadvertised,” Emmott continued. “In any country but Canada, with its passion for anonymity, this line would be as celebrated as the Union Pacific.”
But just because the routes to Fernie, Cranbrook and Nelson toil away in relative obscurity doesn’t mean they aren’t a critical part of today’s CP. The Cranbrook Subdivision is an important outlet for coal mined near Crowsnest Pass. The route also hosts freight to and from the Union Pacific interchange at Eastport, Idaho and because of that armor yellow makes a frequent appearance in the area, adding a dash of variety for the visiting fan. Further west, the CP has an internal short line, the Kootenay Valley Railway, which serves towns like Nelson, Castlegar and Trail, home to a massive smelter. Add in some stunning scenery and fascinating history (we don’t have time to get into the latter but if you’re interested, check out J.F. Garden’s “The Crow and the Kettle” or “Railway Mileposts British Columbia Vol. 2” by Roger Burrows) and you have yourself a great railfan destination.
Every few months, I try to spend a day photographing the CP north of the border. With each trip, I get to know the area and operations just a little bit better and I use that knowledge to find better shots with each subsequent trip.
While it takes a little more effort for me to drive to the CP instead of photographing BNSF Railway’s crossing of nearby Marias Pass, I find that there’s a silver lining in that distance. If I’m railfanning on BNSF and the clouds roll in or the motive power isn’t pristine, I’m more likely to pack the cameras up and make the short drive home. But up on the CP, I stay as long as possible trying to get the most out of the effort it took to get there. Sometimes, that means I’ll spend hours in less than perfect conditions with no trains in sight. Other times, the clouds will break at the last minute and result in one spectacular image that made the whole trek worthwhile.
For now, there is no end goal for my photo project. I don’t plan to write a magazine article about the area (perhaps I just want to maintain the “unsung and unadvertised” nature of the area), it’s just something I like to chip away at in my spare time. If there is any objective it might simply be a desire to create a small collection of images that portray what I think is a fascinating piece of railroad.
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