Freight Train Trip: Vancouver to Kamloops

thank you very much well, that was a cnq office. They just called me and I will take a

train

back to the chambers when I come on the

trip

. It is a wonderful journey, with many beautiful appearances. You will enjoy it. Come on. Our journey begins at CMS. Portman

train

marshalling yards in 30 BC. C., this is where the trains are assembled and disassembled. I show up to work here, pick up my papers and documentation in that little orange building. You see yourself from there. They transport me to the train. Get on board. Check out. the engine and the train and the paperwork call the dispatcher for permission to continue that is the engine and this is some of the inside of the engine cabin it has all the facilities refrigerator stove microwave we have about 12,000 pounds at this time We will go through the yard of the yard and then we will see the locomotive they used to change from ship to train.

I will pass through the surgeon unit yards, where the trains are guarded and well prepared, then we will pass through Vancouver to the Moodle yard, where containers and tractor trailers are placed on flat cars for shipment across Canada and there is an incoming

freight

train. He is at the end of his journey. We are passing through a historic port. The old maritime and train station that is now a museum. The historic Fort Langley itself is. just beyond that grove is quite spectacular and to the left if people want and Lokar, down the Fraser River, there are many fishing boats moored along the river, fishing is a big industry, there are many trains here along the road, this is our second encounter, we will see how it gets spicy, we are on our way again, we are now passing through the Lower Mainland on our way to the hope of PC, basically, the Lower Mainland is a wide valley based on agriculture and actually very picturesque, we will follow it. the Fraser River for most of this relative passage that all the farm towns along the way the

trip

we are taking takes about 11 hours you will do it in 40 minutes I will be tired when it is over we We are heading east towards Hope , when we reach Hope we will turn north and head north until we reach the Sentinel, a seat at which we will head east again towards Camels.

The northern leg of the trip will be through Fraser Canyon and Thompson. River Canyon separated by a lot of small pastoral farmers. I think it's called the Blue Ridge Farm and we do a lot of horse rodeos right there. It is two hundred and twenty-nine miles from Vancouver. Two cameras we will bounce at about one hundred and fifty. fifty-three signals that crossed countless bridges through many tunnels in the past by light attack defenses washing detectors snow shits over water diversion here - there were even three Little Britches coming oh and there are some sexual men working on it Tara keeping you at save for us Train speeds average forty to sixty miles per hour across the Lower Mainland.

We are really moving once we head north through the Fraser Canyon. Our speed drops to 30 to 40 miles per hour and stays there pretty well all the way on the cameras at 60 miles per hour, things happen very fast at 30 miles per hour, you have time to relax, enjoy the scenery there and take care of the train we are heading towards, hopefully, now is where we turn north and leave the Lower Mainland. and we enter Fraser Canyon, our journey is over to subdivide the Yale Subdivision which runs from Vancouver to Boston Bar and the Ashcroft Subdivision which runs from Boston Bar to Independent Chambers.

The river level is quite low at the moment, but that is not always the case. In 1996, after Christmas, the Lower Mainland was paralyzed by a severe snow storm. The air from the roads and actual traffic, knowing that the Lower Mainland was paralyzed for several days, the following year's spring runoff raised a strange river to record levels whose legacy is a log that became trapped when the river level receded and It marked the highest point of the river's height. It remains perched precariously on a rock as a permanent reminder of how high the river reached that year.

A few decades ago, a butter car jumped off a train due to poor train handling, rolled down the bank and floated across the river, everyone thought it was a seedy car and no one could understand how a car could disappear between Edmonton and The Vancouver train team that lost the car simply thought their train had broken up, they coupled it up and continued on their way through Vancouver. We are now only 17 miles from Boston Bar, which is about halfway to Kamloops. The most interesting landscape is yet to come. The trucks rest on the ledge carved into the side. a mountain, goes straight up and down in many places, the track is always curvy and there are many sections of slow track, the survey series is a clever detector, the fence wires are placed between the posts when the slide goes down, it breaks A cable sends a warning signal to trains long before the obstruction.

There is a CP railway bridge over a waterfall on the other side of the river. The section Minh just had is working hard to stabilize the roadbed so it doesn't fall. in the canyon they do it by drilling holes in the bank inserting steel rods and then filling the holes with concrete we are approaching the gates of health it is where the Fraser River makes its way through the now... it is the point in its course where fish skins have been found built to help salmon pass this point as a passage upstream to spawn, they have built an air trap to take tourists from the road above us to the viewing area below when the river is high, the view is impressive in winter and spring.

This part of the Fraser Canyon is one of the most dangerous. You can see how steep the canyon wall is in this area. This is another CP railway bridge over a waterfall. We are now leaving Hicks, the last station in the Hales subdivision, the Anderson River Bridge. It's very tall, he built it on a curve, the Anderson River delta is underwater in the spring and the river is swollen with runoff. Now we are entering the patio of the Boston bar. A sawmill is the town's main industry. A snow blower is stored here, so it is useful for cleaning. winter snow slides over the Boston bar on one of the last turntables still in service.

The old station has been moved away from the track and is being restored. The Boston bar is the turning point for Vancouver crews, and cameras working in a subdivision stop there. An old bunkhouse and a new one are being built, and this one will soon be demolished. A brief stop to enjoy the landscape. Then we go again. We are halfway to Kamloops. Now we still have another four or five hours left. We're poaching a site. old train wreck is hard to see, but there is a locomotive down there on March 26, 1997 a tragic accident claimed the life of driver Terry jealous Benjamin Don believes they are heading east from Oh to Vancouver and at 6:45 that Tomorrow they were poaching Conrad lures the meat: a sulfur train had been placed earlier on the detour, as Conrad had no notice that the roadbed had washed out beneath the track and that, of course, the sulfur train Sulfur had fallen into the giant hole that the landslide had created with no chance to avoid the disaster.

They traveled on their train towards the landslide and towards the sulfur cars below the accident called the fire that ignited the sulfur and burned the engines and cars for days. they were never recovered CM has since installed washout detectors in an attempt to give the crew warning of a missing or unstable rogue bit it's hard to get through that tight without remembering this accident we're approaching the Cisco Bridge this is where we cross over to the side west of the river and the CP who crossed to the east side CP built their line first and chose the best side of the river to build on in their rush to complete their line, they did not pay much attention to minimize the slope and consequently they always go uphill up or downhill.

C n got the poorest site to continue building, but they leveled their runway in comparison, we can see the CP Marte bridge. We crossed back to the east side of the river just before Linton. Litton is usually the hottest place in Canada during the summer. We are leaving the temperate rainforests of the coast and entering the semi-arid desert of the interior Lytton is at the junction of the two rivers and that is where we cross the Thompson and follow it and count the crossing of the Fraser and Thompson rivers because by hitting Justin you can see the clear water. of the Thompson on one side and the muddy water of the Fraser on the other as they slowly mix.

The Thompson River is smaller than the Fraser but more scenic. Many boaters and kayakers find the Thompson River a challenge for the Rocky Mountaineer passenger train. It is the Canadian equivalent of the Orient Express. Tourists come from all over the world to travel on this train. It operates only during the day and at night passengers stay in hotels. They have built special observation cars for passengers to enjoy the view. There is a sharp curve on Highway One as it parallels the CP tracks on the other side of the river, trucks often miss this turn and fall onto the tracks spilling their load over the bank.

CP had to build a small detection fence to warn the train of a truck on the track. On the tracks I saw a broken rail at a turnout on the back track. Between 26 and 28 inches of rail were missing. The weight of the train was only supported in the thin part of the turning point. I walked my train through the detour. The road was then declared impossible until repair there are many mountain sheep along the Thompson River, often causing minor slides that trigger: offenses to the sigh detector, this group of River Raptors stopped for lunch because there were no roads, much of of the railway line in this area cm had built suspension bridges across the river to provide access, some still remain today.

We passed more river beam wigwams and many more. The shape of the mountain, although this area is very scenic, is too dry and rocky to be developed or farmed, it will probably remain an unofficial wildlife reserve forever. The train was startled up there, the only buildings in this area are an abandoned church and house. The trees we see around here are next to the water or high in the mountains, where it is cooler. This contrasts with the Lower Mainland, where trees grow. in the valley, but not high in the mountains, in this semi-arid desert only sagebrush blooms, there is a CP train on the other side of the river, we move at 35 miles per hour on flat tracks, this is a very peaceful country, there are very few minor roads and no public crossings to whistle we rarely see another person unless they are working on the track if it were not for the railway this country would remain relatively untouched by the people it is so dry here that the landscape has not been degraded and remains much As it was yesterday thousands of years ago, at high speed, an eastbound train on the main road encountered a westbound train that was making the decision that the eastbound train did not stop at the signal that indicated stop, passed the signal and turned west as he went. fortunately no one was injured if the west heading had been a minute slower this would have been a head-on collision if it had been a minute faster the east heading would have gone through a liquefied natural gas tanker car it could easily have been a very serious accident the engines were more new ones are designed to predict the cab of the locomotive this engine survived the impact very well compared to the hopper car that suffered the brunt of the collision we are about to enter the Black Canyon it is so called because of the coal deposits in the ground They are exposed, absorb and retain heat.

It's like traveling through an oven in summer. I think this would be one of Canada's hot spots if there were weather recording teams here. The coal deposit makes the slopes somewhat unstable later on. You can see where a giant landslide occurred in 1880 that blocked the river for 44 hours and five miles away you will see a sign commemorating this event. I feel very fortunate to have a job that allowed me to appreciate the beauty of British Columbia and yet I can only glimpse a small portion of the lawyer's accessories. There used to be a sawmill here. The d hyb burner is all that remains.

I can't imagine where they got the logs from. At the top of the posts are a pair of ospreys and their nest. This is a sign commemorating the big slide I pointed out earlier. When this railroad was built, they tried to tunnel through the hill instead of around it. The hills around here are made up of clay and stones. The tunnels continued to collapse during construction. Several workers died. Before it was decided to take a different route, this is what remains of the old Maccabee farm. Rumor has it that it was once a stationof errands. If you look closely, you can see the blue paint from the first in-ground pool built in BC.

We approach another. Tunnel that the builder abandoned and decided to take a different route. Very little remains of the Wallet Chain Aqueduct or the city of Wallet Chain itself. The aqueduct was built to bring water to the city by gravity. Electricity had not yet been invented to pump water. water from the river wall the chain was a thriving community for the last century but all the able-bodied men volunteered for world war i only four of over a hundred returned the town soon died we are poaching salmon in the thompson river begins here as Campbell's Lake overflow Kamloops Lake is very large and scenic, there are a few cabins here and occasionally we see a boat on the water.

I am surprised at how little recreational activity takes place here. I guess the reason is that there are even better ones. lakes near camels The Painted Hills of Gillette get their colors from the variety of mineral deposits in the soil. They are most spectacular at 30 in the morning, just after sunrise. Unfortunately, this scene does not represent the vibrant colors that give these hills their names on the right. Lake, the mix of greens, blues, reds and oranges is incredible. We are only 15 miles from Campbell's. Now we continue following Kamloops. The City of Lake Raymond will soon be on double track for our last high-speed run.Before stopping our train, it's time to call the Kamloops depot master and get directions for our train.

This is the last bridge you will cross, it crosses the North Thompson River. Kamloops is located at the junction of the North Thompson and Thompson rivers and the city. the center is on the right on the left we have the CN yards on one side of the river and a subdivision on the other, the Berk hundred administration building is right in front of us and the white yard office is a little further down the track we we take. On the track the yard attendant gave us, a new team will soon take our train to Jasper and other teams will take it further east.

We secured the engines and our journey was over. They take us to a modern hotel for our stopover in Camus, it has all the comforts to help us enjoy our state well. That's all for the trip. I had a good time, I hope you did too and now I think I'm going to watch some TV and get some rest, take care of yourself.