Yoho National Park is a park in British Columbia on the Rocky Mountains. They have lots of beautiful attractions you can visit. Today I would like to introduce one important site - Spiral Tunnel.
Spiral Tunnel is located at the kicking horse river where the Canadian Pacific Railway passes through the Rocky Mountains. Kicking Horse River was chosen for Canada’s first transcontinental railway, the Canadian pacific, later the TransCanada highway. The Palliser Expedition was explored by Dr James Hector and caused an incident when a packhorse kicked him into the river and died.
(Information about Canadian Pacific Railway: The Prime Minister of Canada promised British Columbia a connection to the railway within ten years of the date they joined confederation in 1871. Finally in place in 1885, the railway stretched across rugged terrain, connecting the country from coast to coast and increasing the ease of transportation for people, supplies and ideas. The railway represented the unification of the country as well as linking Canada to international communication and commerce at both coasts. Albert Bowman Rogers was hired to search the Selkirk mountain range for a suitable route. Up to 15,000 workers helped to build the railway,
Immigrants from Europe and China came to work in the railway and earned less than $2 per day, but 1000 Chinese workers died while building the CPR. )
When they built the railway along the kicking horse pass area, there were some difficulties building through the tunnel in 1884 derailed and tragically killed three workers. For more improvement they built three spur lines were created to divert trains on the train track on what became to known as the “Big Hill”, at first the grade was 4.5, the hill was too steep for the train to drive up the hill, it was very dangerous and accidents occurred so easily. Later an engineer named J.E.Schwitzer found a solution of building the spiral tunnel to reduce the grade from 4.5 to 2.2 so the hill was flat. The project for the spiral tunnels started in 1906 and was completed in 1909. The train goes through the lower part of the spiral tunnel first going under the Trans Canada Highway next it approaches the upper spiral tunnel. Today, up to 30 trains pass through the tunnel at varying times daily.
After reading some paragraphs about Spiral Tunnel I found that the site is very interesting to visit. I will go there to view the Spiral Tunnel.
There are two viewpoints where you can safely watch trains and learn more about the Spiral Tunnels and Kicking Horse Pass National Historic Site of Canada. On average, 25 to 30 trains pass through the Spiral Tunnels daily, though not on a regular schedule.
- From the viewpoint 7.4 km east of Field on the Trans-Canada Highway, you can see the Lower Spiral Tunnel in Mt. Ogden.
- The Upper Spiral Tunnel in Cathedral Mountain can be seen from the pull-off 2.3 km up the Yoho Valley Road.
for more information please visit the link below:
http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/CPR/spiral.htm
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