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 Trains, October 1951 page 14 Canadian Pacific's Kettle Valley route ( BRITISH, CANADA, COLUMBIA, CPR, DIVISION, "KENNEDY, W. GIBSON", TRN )
The Iris G, et al. Trains, March 1977 page 43 an entire train traveling on a lake barge ( BRITISH, CANADA, COLUMBIA, CPR, FERRY, "PATTERSON, STEVE", TRN )
Nothing to crow about Trains, July 1984 page 26 Why Canadian grain moved at rates that didn't cover fuel ( CANADA, CPR, GRAIN, HISTORY, "SANFORD, BARRIE W.", TRN )
Coal from Crowsnest Trains, April 1992 page 28 How Canadian Pacific moves coal ( BRITISH, CANADA, COAL, COLUMBIA, CPR, "GARDEN, JOHN F.", TRN )
Building the mountain railroad Trains, April 2004 page 74 CPR vs. CNR in British Columbia ( "BAILEY, RON", CNR, CPR, MOUNTAIN, CONSTRUCTION, TRN
- Paul North.
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.
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
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
UlrichWas 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?
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 Canada and was forced to retreat. The second rationale was actually reversed in direction; the coal now goes west to export (with small exception) and the lead-zinc concentrate comes to the smelter from Alaska. A third and fourth purpose appeared in the 1990s, simultaneously, and both have been wildly successful. #3 is as a feeder to the U.S. market for Canadian produced potash fertilizer, lumber, LPG, chemicals, clay, and paper (2-3 trains daily). This lane is almost 100% empty backhaul northward. #4 is to use the Port of Portland in lieu of the Port of Vancouver for potash export traffic (2-3 trains daily) and export grain traffic (much less), not to save rail transportation costs, but to save port ship call fees, to spread risk on port labor disruptions, and to save on port land and tenancy costs. The Port of Portland is much less land-poor than most west coast ports and accordingly it is not as expensive to build a terminal there, but it is burdened by a long journey up the Columbia and draft restrictions. But fertilizer doesn't need to move in behemoth ships to find economy of scale like oil, containers, or (to some extent) coal and iron ore, and most of the foreign ports where fertilizer goes can't take the big ships (for the same reasons as Portland), so the Handymax size ships that Portland can accept are just fine.
RWM
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.
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.
Kevin C. Smith"Panamax" I've heard of...but what's "Handymax"?
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 - 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.
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 Model Railroader, February 1966 page 44 ( HOPPER, "KENNEDY, W. GIBSON", ORECAR, SCRATCHBUILD, CONSTRUCTION, FREIGHTCAR, MR )
And, in looking for that reference, I also found this reference to another article (I don't have it, though), which may be of interest to fans of the region:
Build a complete Kettle Valley passenger train Model Railroader, June 1959 page 26 (DRAWING, "KENNEDY, W. GIBSON", KVRR, PASSENGER, SCRATCHBUILD, TRAIN, CONSTRUCTION, PROTOTYPE, MR )
Finally, I recall that N.W. Emmott's closing lines from his article were something like:
"The train crews know they have the best jobs on the railway. The main line may have the traffic, but the branch got the scenery."
I'm just going to have to dig that article out sometime soon . . .
.
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'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
Just got out my atlas and measured as-the -crow-flies (no pun intended) the distance from Medicine Hat to Vancouver by 2 differnt routes: MH to Van. via Crowsnest= 560 miles. MH to Van. via Calgary 650 miles. I would think the degree of difficulty is around the same ( I'm no geographer) so obviously there are other, political? reasons it went North, along with keeping out the "gringos" Then today there is the "crow rate" for shipping grain to the coast,(is it still in effect?) then we get the C.N.R. with a further northen route and then jamming into the Fraser Canyon with you know who. All in all, a good read and great responses, and I'm still sad about the demise of the Kettle Valley line, what a treat if this was still maintained for excursions, oh well.
Common points of Dunmore and Golden (using the lazy man's method of highway miles off Google):
Difference = 1 to 2 crew districts. Those are the common points. If you're measuring via the Kettle Falls Railway route, that's not been a viable route for a primary transcontinental main line at any time in history.
Number of helper grades in the 1880s would have been:
Mark Meyer
VerMontananI would think another of the reasons that the CP's main line is via Calgary and not Crowsnest Pass is the importance of Calgary itself - even that the turn of the century - as well as Banff, world's first national park. CP did much to market visitation to Banff, and Calgary was always a major city in Alberta, compared to anything on the Crowsnest Pass route. Calgary is also the CP junction point for its line to Edmonton, the provincial capital (and until recent years, was even larger than Calgary with regard to population). It would only make sense that the CP designate the main line through the area's top tourist attraction as well as the route to access the province's two major cities.
A couple of quick historical notes. At the time the CPR arrived in Calgary in August 1883 it was little more than a North West Mounted Police fort with a few businesses in tents and shacks. It was so small in fact, that once the CPR decided to not put it's station on the existing town site, the whole town was able to relocate the almost mile west to where the station was put within a couple of days. Interestingly the old fort site became the yard for the Grand Trunk Pacific when they arrived in 1909.
Calgary was not even considered to be a division/crew change point when the line was constructed. The original points where Gleichen to the east and Canmore to the west. This was to provide more equal distances for each sub. About 120 mi. from Medicine Hat to Gleichen, and about 120 mi. from there to Canmore, and then a much shorter sub. from there to the Continental Divide and down to Field. After the line to Edmonton was constructed in 1892, and Alyth yard was built around 1900, then Calgary became a division point and Gleichen and Canmore became stations. Up until the 70's it used to be interesting going to those places and look at the remains of the foundations of the roundhouses and other structures.
As to Banff and Banff National Park. When your means of power is steam and you are in a country where it can go to -40 degrees F. fairly easily, having access to a year round source of water is imperative. Banff and Lake Louise stations are where they are today, because they could supply this water. William Van Horne was one of the backers of this National Park idea, because he need bodies to pay for tickets to destinations on the mountain lines to help pay for the costs of getting passengers and freight to the Pacific coast. And as history has shown, that idea worked out well.
I have access to that grade information somewhere, but I will see how my time is this week, and how this thread progresses before I try to locate it.
Some grade information is in the post by Railway Man on 03-25-2009 near the bottom of Page 1 of this thread. - PDN.
AgentKid VerMontanan I would think another of the reasons that the CP's main line is via Calgary and not Crowsnest Pass is the importance of Calgary itself - even that the turn of the century - as well as Banff, world's first national park. CP did much to market visitation to Banff, and Calgary was always a major city in Alberta, compared to anything on the Crowsnest Pass route. Calgary is also the CP junction point for its line to Edmonton, the provincial capital (and until recent years, was even larger than Calgary with regard to population). It would only make sense that the CP designate the main line through the area's top tourist attraction as well as the route to access the province's two major cities. A couple of quick historical notes. At the time the CPR arrived in Calgary in August 1883 it was little more than a North West Mounted Police fort with a few businesses in tents and shacks. It was so small in fact, that once the CPR decided to not put it's station on the existing town site, the whole town was able to relocate the almost mile west to where the station was put within a couple of days. Interestingly the old fort site became the yard for the Grand Trunk Pacific when they arrived in 1909. Calgary was not even considered to be a division/crew change point when the line was constructed. The original points where Gleichen to the east and Canmore to the west. This was to provide more equal distances for each sub. About 120 mi. from Medicine Hat to Gleichen, and about 120 mi. from there to Canmore, and then a much shorter sub. from there to the Continental Divide and down to Field. After the line to Edmonton was constructed in 1892, and Alyth yard was built around 1900, then Calgary became a division point and Gleichen and Canmore became stations. Up until the 70's it used to be interesting going to those places and look at the remains of the foundations of the roundhouses and other structures. As to Banff and Banff National Park. When your means of power is steam and you are in a country where it can go to -40 degrees F. fairly easily, having access to a year round source of water is imperative. Banff and Lake Louise stations are where they are today, because they could supply this water. William Van Horne was one of the backers of this National Park idea, because he need bodies to pay for tickets to destinations on the mountain lines to help pay for the costs of getting passengers and freight to the Pacific coast. And as history has shown, that idea worked out well. I have access to that grade information somewhere, but I will see how my time is this week, and how this thread progresses before I try to locate it. AgentKid
VerMontanan I would think another of the reasons that the CP's main line is via Calgary and not Crowsnest Pass is the importance of Calgary itself - even that the turn of the century - as well as Banff, world's first national park. CP did much to market visitation to Banff, and Calgary was always a major city in Alberta, compared to anything on the Crowsnest Pass route. Calgary is also the CP junction point for its line to Edmonton, the provincial capital (and until recent years, was even larger than Calgary with regard to population). It would only make sense that the CP designate the main line through the area's top tourist attraction as well as the route to access the province's two major cities.
Calgary itself was not incorporated until 1884 as a town going on to become incorporated as a city in 1894. While a post was erected in the area during 1875 for the then North West Mounted Police now RCMP. It was a very important post to protect Western Canada's Citizens and Immigrants. Also this area of Alberta was becoming a magnet for ranchers as land leases were being acquired for pennies on the dollar. More so Calgary grew into it's modern form thanks to CP.
Thank You.
While researching something else earlier today I happened upon this thread before the most recent posts, how nice to see it revived.
In addition to the water supply concerns, coal was found along the original CP mainline at Medicine Hat, Canmore and Banff (the ghost towns of Anthracite and Bankhead), so there was no need to divert the line just to find a local source of fuel.
The river valleys of southern Alberta are easily overlooked if one has never travelled to the area but they are formidable obstacles, being very wide in addition to very deep. The original Crowsnest line between Lethbridge and Fort Macleod was not only steep and slow, it had numerous bridges and stretches of track along relatively unstable valley walls. The current line over the Lethbridge viaduct and an equally impressive steel bridge at Monarch replaced it, as shown on this map.
https://railways.library.ualberta.ca/Maps-7-4-2/
The Calgary & Edmonton railway was built by a team which included William Mackenzie and Donald Mann, who later attempted to acquire and merge it into their expanding Canadian Northern system. CP had leased the line and by the early 1900s was renewing it annually, but chose to thwart Canadian Northern's effort by signing a 999 year lease in 1904 and gradually buying up any remaining C&E stock soon afterward.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
VerMontanan- as well as Banff, world's first national park. ...
Yellowstone NP was signed into law in 1872. Usually considered the world's first National Park
Mackinac NP was created in 1875. It was later ceded to Michigan as their first State Park.
Banff NP (originally known as Banff Hot Springs Reserve) was created in 1885.
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