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McCulloch’s Wonder: The Story of the Kettle Valley Railway
WHEN WILLIAM VAN HORNE'S FIRST Canadian Pacific Railway locomotive entered B.C. 200 miles north of the Canada/U.S. border, at the most northerly point of the train's route across Canada, it brought with it Ottawa's promises of prosperity and unity.
Two years later silver was discovered in the Kootenays.
With American trains running so close to the Kootenay border that some residents could hear whistles in the night, the CPR's Thomas Shaughnessy asked engineer Andrew McCulloch to undertake a three-decade struggle to connect the lucrative Kootenays to the CPR station at Hope over mountainous terrain thought to be impassable by builders of the national rail line.
The remarkable story of how the lifeline of Southern British Columbia was constructed and maintained for half a century, Barrie Sanford's McCulloch's Wonder: The Story of the Kettle Valley Railway (Whitecap $12.95), has been reprinted for the first time in paperback after three hardcover editions. Written after 10 years of extensive research, the 1977 book traces an inspiring, saddening chapter of B.C. history from the 1890s to the removal of the last spike from the Boston Bar to Brodie section on October 24, 1962.
The construction of the Hope-Princeton highway in the 1950's severely decreased Kettle Valley traffic but it was a CPR decision in 1961 to divert coast-bound Kootenay freight via the mainline removing over 80 per cent of the freight overnight that effectively scuttled the Kettle Valley Division.
[Autumn / BCBW 1988]
Two years later silver was discovered in the Kootenays.
With American trains running so close to the Kootenay border that some residents could hear whistles in the night, the CPR's Thomas Shaughnessy asked engineer Andrew McCulloch to undertake a three-decade struggle to connect the lucrative Kootenays to the CPR station at Hope over mountainous terrain thought to be impassable by builders of the national rail line.
The remarkable story of how the lifeline of Southern British Columbia was constructed and maintained for half a century, Barrie Sanford's McCulloch's Wonder: The Story of the Kettle Valley Railway (Whitecap $12.95), has been reprinted for the first time in paperback after three hardcover editions. Written after 10 years of extensive research, the 1977 book traces an inspiring, saddening chapter of B.C. history from the 1890s to the removal of the last spike from the Boston Bar to Brodie section on October 24, 1962.
The construction of the Hope-Princeton highway in the 1950's severely decreased Kettle Valley traffic but it was a CPR decision in 1961 to divert coast-bound Kootenay freight via the mainline removing over 80 per cent of the freight overnight that effectively scuttled the Kettle Valley Division.
[Autumn / BCBW 1988]
Submitted on December 13, 2003 in By David.
