Canadian Railroads > Rocky Mountaineer Meets CP Stacks

Westbound Rocky Mountaineer meets a CP eastbound somewhere between Revelstoke and Craigellachie, BC.

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It is at Taft.

Leanne Braid
Kamloops BC

Thank you.

Taft BC, Mile 23.7 of CP Shuswap Subdivision. Until the mid 1960's, Taft was the end of double track from Revelstoke. The eastbound track was on part of the original 1885 alignment which had a different route between Taft and Three Valley. In steam days, pushers (helper engines) operated on westbounds from Revelstoke to Taft. The westbound track had heavier rail to allow use of 2-10-4 "Selkirks". These were the road engines between Calgary and Revelstoke. At Revelstoke, the 2-10-4's cut off, and a 2-8-2, 4-6-4 or 4-6-2 was added behind the 2-10-4. At Taft, the "Selkirk" was removed, wyed and returned to Revelstoke for servicing.

For many years, Taft was the location of a sawmill and town, and a logging railroad went north from the tail of the wye, using switchbacks to gain altitude to enter a nearby valley.

Rail employees noted a small grave marker beside Crazy Creek at Taft. It was wooden and the inscription was almost illegible. They restored it. It was a memorial to an 11 year old boy who drowned in Crazy Creek in the 1920's, after rescuing his baby sister. The girl survived and not long ago decided to visit the site of the tragedy with her family. They didn't expect to find much, as the marker was made of wood and more than 60 years had passed since it was placed. Imagine their surprise to find a well tended and restored grave site.

The back tracks at Taft, Three Valley and Clanwilliam are the original passing tracks on the former double track route. The double track was removed in the 1960's through the tunnels west of Clanwilliam to allow centering of the track within the tunnels to allow for piggyback (TOFC) cars on freight. The BLF&E objected to the removal of the double track at the time. The CPR CEO of the time N.R."Buck" Crump said that CTC with sidings would be more efficient than two tracks with ABS.

In the 1980's and after 2000, a grade seperated westbound track has been built from the west end of the Columbia River bridge at Revelstoke to Clanwilliam, creating a 1% grade up the eastern slope of Eagle Pass.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/09 18:15 by eminence_grise.

Your 'eminence'

Always appreciate your very informative background posts on aspects of Canadian railroading. I've learned much about our railroad heritage from them!

Sounds like you had a nice flat wheel on your car - not fun for a 'luxury' ride!!

Also, your video aspect ratio is off - everything is scrunched. Seems like it is an HD clip, but it's showing in a 4x3 format. Would love to see it in the proper aspect.

Luckily the wheel thump was only noticable inside at low speeds and under braking. Still trying to figure out the secrets of maintaining the video aspect ratio. My previous uploads were 16:9s coverted to 4:3s for upload. These result in stretched thumbnails and some loss of resolution. This one was uploaded as a 16:9 and generated the correct thumbnail but squished playback.

Larry

Thanks to Todd and Chris at TrainOrders for the quick help.

Larry

The dimmed headlight/"tail light" on the freight pusher unit, is out.
Hmmmmmmmmm.
Doesn't Canada follow this rule?

I added a video file to this post with the aspect ratio corrected but it soon disappeared. I guess you cannot add a second video file to a thread.

I just realised that adding the revised video probably exceeded the maximum allowed attached file size for the post.