The town of Cranbrook, British Columbia has one of the most important railway museums in Canada - the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel. This museum focuses on passenger travel by rail, and features several passenger train sets.
This makes the museum unique - its laser-like focus on passenger rail travel. No random collections of CN and CP freight cars, passenger cars and locomotives here.
The Tours
Retractable beds
Visiting the museum is a little different than other museums. You can't wander around on your own here.
You sign up for one or more guided tours that leave at scheduled times and tour specific train sets. These are the tours:
Pay close attention to their schedule when planning your visit!
A few notes about the tours. Once you start a tour, you can't stop. You can leave between segments, if you booked several tours, but you can't leave in the middle of the train. There aren't any bathrooms on the trains, so take care of that before the tour!
Of course, there's no smoking permitted on the tours, and no food and drink can be brought into the trains. These cars are immaculate so they want to keep them that way.
Solarium car
The Experience
Love that dome
We, OK, I elected to take the Grand Tour to see everything in one shot. Our guide met the group of us and gave us a quick introduction in the baggage car before we started going through the cars.
As we entered each car, the guide went ahead and waited for the group to fill in. There was adequate time to snap a photo or two on entry, and of course you can take photos while the guide is talking.
Our guide was extremely knowledgeable about each car and provided a lot of interesting information without being boring. My wife, a non-railfan, was interested and said she enjoyed the visit.
The pace was good - a few minutes in each section of each car - so you kept moving, but I never felt rushed.
The cars are gorgeous inside. They have restored as much of the original wood, brass, stained glass, seats, and other fittings as they could. Some of the wood work is simply outstanding and the museum has gone to a lot of trouble and expense to restore it.
Detail in the wood work
The Trans-Canada Limited
I found the 1929 Trans-Canada Limited train set to be the most interesting.
Canadian Pacific Railway operated the summer-only Trans-Canada Limited from 1919 to 1930. This train was the premiere train on the CPR, with sleeper-only service and the highest quality of food, service and rail cars. No coach passengers here!
The CPR had new cars built for the Trans-Canada Limited, and its Soo Line sister the Mountaineer, in time for the 1929 season. Unfortunately, the American stock market crashed in October 1929 and patronage quickly dried up in the 1930 season. The CPR cancelled the Trans-Canada Limited before the start of the 1931 season.
Dining car "Argyle"
The museum has a complete seven-car set originally built for the Trans-Canada Limited, which is quite a feat.
The cars are superbly restored and consist of:
CP 4489, baggage/sleeper
CP 6751, parlor car
Argyle, diner
Somerset, sleeper
Rutherglen, sleeper
Glencassie, sleeper
River Rouge, solarium lounge car
Three taps - hot water, waste water (gray water for washing), and cold water
The solarium car was spectacular. If I recall correctly, the big windows have special glass to let the ultraviolet rays in because they believed that was healthy.
The Outside
Between the tracks
One thing you'll notice from the outside is that the cars don't look like much. Unlike other railway museums where the exterior receives a lot of attention, the focus here is on the interior. The exteriors are pretty plain and in some cases, maybe a little shabby. Don't let that fool you! The interiors are what count in this museum.
Undergoing some work
Restoration Work
Some of the cars are still undergoing work. Check out this car that has been stripped down and is ready to be rebuilt.
A blank canvas
Many of these passenger cars were converted into maintenance-of-way service for the railway. Out of service passenger cars became bunk cars, or kitchen cars, or tool cars. At best they received layers of paint on top of the beautiful wood work, and at worst the cars were completely reworked inside.
One car that caught my eye was an Intercolonial Railway car, built in 1890 as ICR 736, a baggage car. This car is not open to the public but I spotted this ICR plaque on the end platform.
Ah, the Intercolonial
You can just see the link and pin coupler at the bottom of the photo.
The Royal Alexandra Hotel
The former Royal Alexandra Hotel dining room
The museum has a piece of history from Winnipeg. The CPR had a deluxe hotel next to their tracks, the Royal Alexandra Hotel. This hotel opened in 1906 and served the CPR for many years before closing in 1967. It was demolished in 1971. (more information)
However, before the demolition, the interior of the dining room was carefully disassembled and removed. It was transported to Cranbrook and reassembled there in the museum, where it can be viewed now. I believe it can be rented for functions.
Wrapping Up
There are a couple of other attractions in the same building - the Cranbrook History Centre - as the museum: a gift shop, a model train layout, and the Cranbrook Museum.
Model train layout at the Cranbrook History Centre
Outside the museum are a pair of CP "F" locomotives, as well as the former Elko railway station and a water tower. I wrote about those here.
Views of the rail cars from the outside are very limited, due to the fencing around the site.
Locomotives earmarked for the 1955 stainless steel train... when VIA is done with it
Go See It
I highly - highly - recommend visiting this museum. It is definitely one of the jewels of the Canadian railway museum scene.
Here's a video I found showing some of the restoration work that has been done at the museum. These cars are just beautiful.
No, there is too much. Let me sum up. - Inigo Montaya, "The Princess Bride"
Day 5 - Golden to Banff
We woke up at a reasonable hour (7:30 AM or so) to start our short drive from Golden, BC to Banff to continue my 50th birthday trip. It's a mere 139 km drive, only an hour and a half assuming no interruptions for construction or traffic... and we had the whole day to do it in!
Naturally I had factored in some train watching time, so I expected to take a lot longer than 1.5 hours to travel that distance.
We left Golden and headed east on the Trans-Canada. There's some pretty scenic country along that stretch of highway, and the CP main line flirts with both the highway and the Kicking Horse River. Unfortunately, there were no trains running when we drove past, and even if there were, the tremendous amount of road construction would have made it hard to pull over to get a shot.
Trains stop here for a crew change and it's not unusual to find a train or two stopped any time you drive by.
This time was no exception, with CP 9609 East stopped by the former telegraph building.
They were not parked in a very photogenic location, especially with the sun not really showing its bright face, so I tried a few different angles to try to get a better photograph of this grain train.
We ended up sitting here for about an hour... thank my patient wife, as usual.
Playing with image editing
It seemed obvious that they were waiting for a meet.
I don't know who Woody is, but he's all over this locomotive.
WOODY WOODY WOODY WOODY
It turned out that there was another eastbound grain train coming, and it stopped at the former station in Field. CP 9782 was at the head.
CP 9782 in Field, British Columbia
But CP 9609 wasn't waiting for that train... it was waiting for CP 8554 West.
The Meet
CP 8554 and 9650 in Field, BC
CP 8554 came rolling into Field. I patiently waited for CP 8554 to come out of the shadows and into the sunlight to get the shot. It's a pretty nice view here!
They rolled through the crossing and met CP 9609 and its crew, on the ground for the roll-by inspection.
CP 8554, meet CP 9609
That golden beaver on CP 8554 is looking pretty ragged!
Even the end unit, CP 9355, looked pretty good.
CP 9355 on the rear
We hit the road after CP 9355 passed by. I assumed CP 9609 East was going to head out right away so I wanted to get ahead of it.
The Spiral Tunnels
Arguably the most famous railway attraction in Canada, or least the Rocky Mountains, the two spiral tunnels replaced CPR's "Big Hill" and replaced the perilous 4.5% grade with a more manageable 2.2%. There's a viewpoint along the Trans-Canada Highway where you can view both portals of the Lower Spiral Tunnel.
We parked there and went to see if CP 9609 East had caught up to us. I could hear it, and by the time I fought my way through the crowds to get a view, I saw the DPU (CP 9653) far below.
CP 9653 - man in the middle
Less than a minute later, the lead locomotive popped out of the upper tunnel portal.
CP 9609 at the upper portal of the Lower Spiral Tunnel
The photo above is heavily cropped from a 200mm shot from quite a distance away. To right is the same viewpoint, at 85mm and uncropped.
I'm frankly impressed that it is as sharp as it is. Note the "1908" at the top of the portal. The Canon 70-200mm f/4 lens is a good one!
Soon the train looped over itself... not that you can really see it any more. The area is so overgrown that you can't even see the lower portal, and when trains leave the lower portal heading east, you can catch glimpses of the train through the thick tree growth but that's it.
Parks Canada is really dropping the ball here on maintaining this site. Like Morant's Curve, it's up to them to maintain the trees and cut them back where required. If this keeps up, in another decade there will be no point in stopping here as nothing will be visible.
Rant over.
The train looped over itself - trust me
We didn't wait for the train to finish going through... I wanted to try to catch it at Wapta Lake like I did the last time I was in the area.
Sadly there was a ton of road construction by the lake and there was no place to stop. The light wasn't great anyway, so we carried on.
We wanted to visit Moraine Lake after we caught this train, so we kept going to the Lake Louise exit. There were a lot of cars around, and there were people directing traffic at each 4-way stop. That was a first in my experience!
We went straight to the old Lake Louise station - now a restaurant - and I waited by the display cars for the train to come along.
Lake Louise
CP 9609 East at Lake Louise
CP 9609 came storming around the corner. She put on a lovely show and sounded great as the train rolled on by the station.
Nice wave from the engineer!
The wave
For those who care, I believe the train took a few minutes less than an hour to run the 20.4 miles from Field to Lake Louise.
Frustration
We left the chase off here and went to Lake Louise proper.
Or, I should say, we tried to go to Lake Louise.
There were so many people around that there was no place to park and they were turning everyone away.
Our alternate was nearby Moraine Lake, which was also full.
There was overflow parking with a shuttle bus, but it was already well after lunch time so we decided to give it up for the day and come back early the next day.
Apparently this was a great "fall foliage" day and everyone was out to try to see it one last time. It was a nice warm day, perhaps one of the last for the season. The free admittance to national parks as part of the Canada 150 celebrations probably helped, too.
Anyway, we headed down the Bow Valley Parkway aka Highway 1A aka the long way between Lake Louise and Banff. I wanted to see if there were any trains and my wife wanted to see wildlife.
We stopped briefly at Morant's Curve.
Morant's Curve
There were the usual collection of photographers there, but we didn't linger too long. I stayed for about 10 minutes, taking a few photos and chatting with a professional photographer there. He was hoping to catch a train and we talked angles and exposures and composition. Fun!
I really wanted to try a different location this time - Castle Mountain.
Castle Mountain
Castle Mountain, Banff National Park
There's a rest stop close to Castle Mountain that overlooks the Bow River and, more importantly to me, the CP Laggan subdivision. It's here and it even has a bathroom!
I parked here and then went to scout angles and set up while my wife waited in the car.
Panorama at Castle Mountain
You can see that it's pretty scenic! There's a nice curve to the west and a straight section to the east. A path leads across the top of the slope so you can get around pretty easily. I wouldn't say you can get very close to the track without clinging to the side of the hill and/or being too close to the tracks for safety.
After about 35 minutes, a train came along... from the west.
CP 8913 at Castle Mountain
I liked this spot!
After 8913 and 8608 rolled by with their train of containers and autoracks, all was quiet for another half an hour. Eventually I heard a train coming from the east and set up to record CP 8957 West, another intermodal train.
CP 8957 at Castle Mountain
The lighting was a bit challenging, since it was 3:30 PM in the mountains on a cloudy day.
The train looked pretty good going away, too.
Going away
This train had a DPU, CP 8747.
CP 8747 in the middle of a train
I was happy to bag both a westbound and an eastbound train at that location. I packed up and we continued down the 1A / Bow Valley Parkway to Banff.
Breaking Up
When I started this series, I intended to have a post for every day of our trip. I'm breaking that "rule" now as we saw several more trains in the evening. This post is long enough, and the trains we saw were special enough, that I'd prefer to put them in another post. Coming soon... thanks for your patience.
Up Next
The rest of day 5 was spent in Banff, trying to photograph the Rocky Mountaineer. That didn't happen, but only because something better came along!
The show business officials
Turn a deaf ear to the stage
Their hearts are locomotives
And their minds are narrow-gauge
- Stephen Fearing, "The Life"
Swingin' good times
We started the fourth day of my 50th birthday trip in Sicamous, British Columbia. This was my actual birth day.
After a nice rest in the Best Western - and a nice free breakfast - we got back in our Chrysler 300 and headed out... a few hundred metres to the bridges over the Sicamous Narrows.
Sicamous
Sicamous - Houseboat Capital of Canada!
The Mara Lake empties into the much larger Shuswap Lake, and there are two bridges over the narrows - the highway bridge and a railway bridge, which is an operating swing bridge.
Sicamous bills itself as the "Houseboat Capital of Canada". We didn't go looking for houseboats, but I assume there were a lot of them!
I was hoping for a train, so I spent some time walking around on the road bridge (the R.W. Bruhn Bridge, built in 1962, apparently being considered for a replacement), taking photos and wishing really hard for a train.
I got the photos, but I didn't get a train.
There used to be a branch line from Sicamous down to Vernon, a former CP line that became the Okanagan Valley Railway, a subsidiary of OmniTRAX. This railway operated from late 1998 to September 2009. The railway is gone now, sadly. (More on the OVR)
There is a bit of a stub track there, which contained a few gondolas overloaded with old railway ties and a backhoe.
That bridge was as far west as we made it this trip.
We headed east, en route to Three Valley Gap. On the way, we passed a few of British Columbia's many amazingly beautiful lakes, and I had to stop at one of them to take a few photos. BC is so beautiful.
Yet another beautiful lake - Griffin Lake, I think
Three Valley Gap
Three Valley Gap
I mentioned that we had originally planned to stay at the Three Valley Gap hotel, but changed our minds before the trip. I still wanted to stop there, however, as they have a good collection of railway rolling stock there in a roundhouse.
We paid the $12 entrance fee and wandered through the "ghost town". It's a collection of buildings from various locations gathered together to try to recreate a pioneer town.
C.B. Hume & Company at Three Valley Gap
It was interesting - my wife liked the pharmacy - but I was intent on visiting the roundhouse and the cars there.
I won't get into detail on the roundhouse - it probably merits its own post - but I'll make a few comments. The roundhouse is modern and looks it. It's quite large - 24 bays and about 300 feet in diameter. The roundhouse has the largest fully covered turntable in North America.
Inside the Three Valley Gap roundhouse
About half of the stalls are occupied, with various pieces of rolling stock from various eras, mostly passenger cars. There are a few noteworthy cars - including ex VIA 1 (with a cardboard cutout of Pierre Trudeau) and ex BC Rail Caribou. Some are in the roundhouse and some are on display elsewhere on the property.
I admit we rushed through the facility, spending just under an hour there. We probably could have spent another hour looking at the antique auto museum, studying their collection of fire trucks, and going into more of the buildings in the village.
However, Revelstoke was calling.
Revelstoke
Channeling my inner Greg McDonnell
We headed east toward Revelstoke to visit the excellent railway museum there. Like Cranbrook, I described the Revelstoke Railway Museum separately... but I'll say here that it was an excellent experience. It's a top notch museum well worth visiting. It's unabashedly CPR, as it should be, on CP's main line.
Rolling stock on display outside the Revelstoke railway museum
I visited the gift shop and bought a few more BRMNA books to add to my collection. You may have seen these soft cover books - focusing on broad topics like Canadian Pacific in Manitoba, or very niche topics. They are out of print but pretty common in gift shops and at train shows, and relatively inexpensive.
Crossing the Columbia
After we toured the museum, we bought sandwiches at a local supermarket and went to the Centennial Park along the Columbia River. It was a lovely place to have a little picnic lunch and take in the sights.
The weather was lovely, and CP even sent a train across the river during our lunch. I didn't catch the lead engine numbers, but the trailing locomotive was CP 9677. It didn't matter... because I saw that train again later.
On our way out of town, I stopped at the CP yard in Revelstoke and snapped a few long distance photos of equipment parked there.
There were a few snow plows, a yellow caboose with multimark, and this interesting spreader, CP 402862.
CP 402862 in Revelstoke
Into the Selkirks
East of Revelstoke, you enter part of the Selkirk mountain range. The views are pretty awesome and we had to stop a couple of times to take photos.
Albert Peak, maybe?
After skirting Revelstoke National Park, we entered Glacier National Park. Just inside the park is this interesting structure on the CP Mountain subdivision at Flat Creek.
Mystery structure at Flat Creek
I had spotted it before the trip when scouting locations, and I asked about it in the RailsBC group on Facebook. It's a dimension / shifted load scanner, used to alert train crews if their train won't fit in the Connaught or Mount Macdonald tunnels to the east.
The yellow sign says "NOTICE: When red light is flashing, NO employee or others, either on foot or in motor vehicles are permitted to pass this point due to Avalanche Control."
Not far after this, I found a spot with a little bridge and a snow shed that I thought would be nice to photograph trains at. I believe this was actually Flat Creek under the bridge, but I could be wrong.
This location was the scene of a disastrous derailment on November 24, 1977. CP Extra 5820 West derailed here and dumped most of its loaded coal train into the valley after running away past Glacier. Fortunately nobody was killed but the damage was severe and the line was closed for 10 days. (article 1, article 2, article 3)
I was pretty sure we were ahead of the container train we saw in Revelstoke... but not too far ahead. After a few minutes, I could hear a train labouring along through the mountains. I wandered around trying to find a decent location to capture both the "coming" shot on the bridge and the "going" shot through the snow shed. It helped that there was a little rise that I could stand on to get a little height while still staying well away from the tracks.
Eventually CP 9376 East crossed the bridge and was imprinted onto my memory card.
CP 9376 at Flat Creek
Unfortunately I blew the sky out a bit. The lighting was definitely challenging, as it was overcast and I didn't want to get the train in shadow.
The "going away" shot was better.
About to enter the snow shed
You can see the snow shed around the corner. No need for it yet, but soon!
I photographed a few containers and then we hit the road... hoping for another shot.
The Mount Macdonald Tunnel
In my pre-trip scouting, I found the west portal of the Mount Macdonald Tunnel here - right by the highway. I was interested!
After shooting CP 9376 at Flat Creek, we were heading east when I spotted a good-looking spot to stop to shoot the train again. It turned out to be the portal! Total coincidence.
Not a bad spot!
You can see the tunnel portal to the left.
West portal of the Macdonald Tunnel
The Macdonald Tunnel is 14.7 km (9.1 miles) long and is the longest railway tunnel in North America - and maybe in both Americas. It was completed in 1988 after four years of construction and significantly eased the westbound grade (from 2.2% to 1%), and eliminated the pusher locomotives required to get trains west through the nearby Connaught Tunnel (more on the tunnel here)
Generally westbound trains use the Macdonald Tunnel and eastbound trains use the Connaught Tunnel.
I got there a good ten minutes before CP 9376 East arrived. I took a few photos to get the right exposure. I didn't want to get closer to the tracks because I wanted to stay in a safe spot, and I wanted the mountains in the background of the shot when the eastbound arrived.
I couldn't help but notice a loud humming... coming from the tunnel. Could there be a westbound coming? After a few minutes, I had no doubt. Which train would arrive first?
First Train
CP 9376 East by the Macdonald Tunnel portal
It was CP 9376 East that came first. I was happy with that because I could get an obscured photo of the train before the westbound came.
It was not long before the westbound came - about 2 minutes. CP 8871 West!
CP 8871 West at the Macdonald Tunnel
Wouldn't that have been sweet if the two trains had met in front of the portal?
The mid-train DPU of the eastbound came along very shortly afterward. That Providence and Worcester autorack at bottom right is the second car after the second locomotive (CP 8506) of the westbound.
CP 9663 as mid train locomotive
Finally, CP 9677 came rolling by as the tail-end locomotive.
CP 9677 on the tail end at the Macdonald Tunnel portal
That was the end of that eastbound train for me.
A few minutes later, the westbound finished coming out of the tunnel, with no DPU anywhere in the train.
I was taking video with my phone on a tripod.
Here's the video. Unfortunately my phone ran out of power before the end of the train passed, but it only missed a few empty platforms on the end.
My wife will confirm that I was literally dancing for joy, having seen a meet at the tunnel portal. That was special - the meet, not the dancing. Pretty sure the dancing was awful.
Happy birthday to me!
Kinbasket Lake
Kinbasket Lake
When I was planning this trip, I was asking around for photo locations and Kinbasket Lake was one suggestion. This is quite a long, skinny lake, created by the construction of the giant Mica Dam in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Trans-Canada Highway passes near the very southeast tip of it. There is a campground there - the Kinbasket Lake Resort.
The resort is accessible by a gravel road, and it's about a ten minute drive from the TCH through several switchbacks. I imagine it would be "fun" to take a trailer through there but obviously people do, as the campground had a lot of occupants when we arrived. We parked just outside the campground, after going through the railway crossing just above the campground.
We were greeted by someone who in retrospect was probably the owner, five-time Stanley Cup winner Rick Chartraw. He was super friendly and graciously allowed us to wander around when we asked to take a few photos of the lake.
Note the bridge in the photo below. It'll come up later.
A lovely spot
We spent a few minutes walking around and enjoying the peace and quiet. The smells of cooking drifted from the campground and my stomach rumbled a bit - it was 5:30 PM or so - so we took our photos and started back. Just then, I heard the crossing bells start.
"RUN!" my wife said, and so I did, running up the hill to the crossing to try to catch the train there.
CP 9819 at Kinbasket Lake
There was CP 9819 East, rolling through the crossing at mile 54.59 of the CP Mountain subdivision. It was a potash train.
Potash cars at Kinbasket Lake
That train was really moving! Dozens and dozens of potash cars flashed by, and I couldn't help thinking that it was good that this crossing had lights and a bell, because it would be very dangerous to have simple crossbucks at that location with no sight lines for drivers to see any approaching trains.
CP 9610 was on the tail end.
Panning CP 9610
This trip was definitely helping me practice my panning skills!
While I was doing this, my clever wife went the other way and walked onto the bridge I mentioned above. This was her view of the train:
My wife's photo FTW
I returned from the crossing and she beckoned me onto the bridge to see what I missed. We agreed that she definitely had the better spot.
Golden
We returned to Golden, this time to stay for the night. I had booked a room at the Holiday Inn Express - again, with points. It was a nice place to stay, as this chain usually is.
I wanted to peek in the Golden yard before supper. I spotted a few interesting cars in the yard, including several cabeese, sleeper units on flatcars, and ex baggage (?) car CP 411697.
CP 411697 and CP 5875 in Golden yard
My wife spotted a deer having a snack by the road and captured this great photo of it.
I'm beginning to think I should stick to writing words and leave the photography to my wife!
I went down to the south end of the yard and spotted CP 2295 and CP 2291 doing some shunting. It was getting a little dark by then (7:15 PM) but I did what I could. It helped that they weren't moving!
CP 2291 and 2295, mountains, and Golden yard
We were just about to leave when I heard a train coming in off the CP Windermere subdivision, led by another pair of ECO units - CP 5007 and CP 2243.
These were harder to photograph because they were moving. I elected to keep the background in focus and let the train blur, rather than pan and lose the background.
CP 5007 arriving in Golden yard
That was finally the end of the train watching for the day.
My meal at Island Restaurant
We spotted a nice restaurant on the island in the middle of the Kicking Horse River, appropriately named the Island Restaurant. HIGHLY recommended.
The service was great, the food was fantastic, and they even brought out a free brownie for dessert when they found out it was my birthday.
Up Next
The plan for day 5 was to travel from Golden to Banff through Field and Lake Louise, railfanning along the way. That's basically what we did, with a bit of detouring... READ ON!
P.S. I hope you are enjoying this series. I'm sorry it is taking so long for me to write each post, but it takes a long time to edit photos, write and research each post. I'm doing the best I can! :) Next post
