Kettle Valley Railway
The Kettle Valley Railway (reporting mark KV)[1] was a subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) that operated across southern British Columbia, west of Midway running to Rock Creek, then north to Myra Canyon, down to Penticton over to Princeton, Coalmont, Brookmere, Coquihalla and finally Hope where it connected to the main CPR line.
The Kettle Valley Railway was built out of necessity to service the growing mining demands in the Southern Interior region of British Columbia.
Too many mountain ranges stood between Alberta and Vancouver in the southern portions of British Columbia, and CPR had selected what they felt was the path of least resistance.
These miners quickly found that it was much quicker and cheaper to get their supplies from the recently completed Northern Pacific Railroad that transited through Spokane.
Construction was some of the costliest per track mile when compared against most other North American railway projects, costing almost $20 million, and it took nearly 20 years to complete.
The core portion of the Kettle Valley Railway started in Hope up the steep Coquihalla Valley through the narrow rocky canyon to Coquihalla Pass, transited through GN track via Brookmere, Tulameen, to Princeton; again back on CP track up the grasslands at Jura, through the light forest to Osprey Lake, and down to Summerland, Penticton, Beaverdell and terminated in Midway.
After the end of the First World War, additional spur lines connected Copper Mountain with Princeton, Oliver with Penticton.
In the late 1930s until into the 1960s, the portion of the former Columbia & Western Railway from Midway, through Grand Forks continuing through to Castlegar was also periodically referred to as being part of the KVR as well.
In later years of operations after 1962, the Kootenay Division administered the Carmi Subdivision all the way west to the east end of the yard at Penticton, BC.
The Kettle Valley Railway was its own entity, but in practical reality, under the thumb of senior CPR management after about 1912.
Freight carried on the KVR consisted primarily of ore from the Kootenay region of British Columbia, as well as forestry products and fruit from the Okanagan.
During the Kettle Valley Railway's lifespan, on numerous occasions it was called upon to act as "The Second Mainline" when washouts, avalanches and rock slides closed off the main CPR line through the Fraser Canyon.
(Others, better-informed, knew that the 1950s upgrades were part of a larger corporate strategy: it aimed at getting rid of unprofitable lines such as the Coquihalla Subdivision.)
All rail service stopped from Midway to Penticton (including the famed Myra Canyon section) in May 1973, with the trackage being labelled as abandoned in 1978.
In the early 1970s, at various times when forest products were shipping at peak rates, trains were operated between Penticton and Spences Bridge daily.
In early 1983, wood chip service was moved to trucking and from that point onwards, rail traffic quickly diminished to a couple of trains per week.
Andrew McCulloch, who oversaw the engineering projects[2] which resulted in the complex series of bridges and tunnels through Coquihalla Canyon, was an avid reader of William Shakespeare.
As a result of an anniversary of the Bard's death in 1916, McCulloch had a role in naming Coquihalla Subdivision stations after characters in Shakespearean literature, such as Iago, Romeo, Juliet, Lear, Jessica, and Portia.
For years after the abandonment of this section of rail line, the area was a noted attraction, with its relatively gentle grade, it became a hiker and cyclist haven.
In some cases vandals had removed railway ties on the larger steel bridges, thus creating large gaps.
Hikers and cyclists wanting to cross the trestles would be required to walk on sections of steel no wider than a foot across where the ties were removed.
[6] Soon after the Okanagan Mountain Park Fire in 2003, the BC provincial government announced that it would rebuild the damaged and destroyed trestles and bridges.
When constructing the railway through the roughest portion of the Coquihalla Canyon, chief engineer Andrew McCulloch determined that a routing proposed by his subordinates through this section was unnecessarily long or complex.
The railway initially operated with one 1924 Shay locomotive loaned from the BC Forest Discovery Centre in Duncan, British Columbia.
It was originally operated by the Mayo Lumber Company on Vancouver Island, and was specifically designed to work on rough forestry trackage.
Kettle Valley Railway was featured on the historical television series Gold Trails and Ghost Towns, season 2, episode 8.
Because the CP route through the Rockies had been upgraded to modern steel bridges, the CBC miniseries The National Dream filmed its opening and a number of scenes where wooden trestles were wanted on the Myra Canyon section of the Kettle Valley Railway.
