Transportation Engineering

Mountain Railways

The Kettle Valley Railway

The Kettle Valley Railway was built 1913 - 1916 linking the coast with the Kootenays and crossing three major mountain ranges. It required 43 bridges, using 22 million board feet of lumber and 4500 tons of steel, 13 tunnels and 16 snowsheds. Andrew McCulloch, the engineer in charge, was a Shakespeare enthusiast and named many of the stations after characters in the plays (Juliet, Romeo, Portia, Lear and one called Othello).

The line ran along the north bank of the Coquihalla River climbing 36 miles from sea level to the Coquihalla Summit at 3646 feet. Close to Hope, at what is now known as Othello, McCulloch encountered one of many challenging obstacles, a straight walled canyon rising in some parts to over 300 feet.

Hanging precariously from the side of the canyon, McCulloch surveyed the area and developed a plan for a series of tunnels. Using perfectly aligned tunnels with two bridges between three of them, he managed to build a route across the canyon.

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First tunnel The railway has been taken out and replaced with a foot bridge to allow tourists to view McCulloch's civil engineering marvel.

Second tunnel with bridge between tunnel one and two.

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