This is a story that was told to me by Gerry Kilpatrick (who retired in 1986) while holding a regular run as the engineer on passenger trains one and two “The Canadian” out of Vancouver B.C. Gerry told me that back in 1951, when he couldn’t hold a Firing job out of Coquitlam, he went to Brookmere to work on the Coquihalla part of the Kettle Valley line.
Gerry Kilpatrick was born in Newfoundland (a British Colony at that time) in 1925 in the small town of Whitbourne. He made his home there until 1943 when he joined the RAF (Royal Air Force) who trained him to be the top gunner on large, four engine, Liberator bombers and he served overseas. When Gerry left school, at age 15 in 1940, he wasn’t old enough to go into the military so he joined a war workers group at the Newfoundland Railway’s Dry Dock. It was wartime and there he was trained in the work at repairing some of the many damaged ships coming in to the Atlantic seaport of Saint Johns.
Gerry’s grandfather, Henry Kilpatrick, was a civil engineer who went to Newfoundland to supervise the building of the narrow gauge Newfoundland Railway, where he drove the first spike in 1885. Gerry’s father, Henry K,. took the necessary training and hired on the Newfoundland Railway as an operator. Later he became a Trainman when the railway decided to put a person with telegraphy experience on each passenger train. This was so that the dispatcher could be notified when the train became stuck in the snow, which happened at least once every winter. When asked if he had to climb poles to hook up the telegraph he laughed and replied that he never had to climb any poles but instead usually had to dig down through the deep snow to find the telegraph wires to give the dispatcher their position. Gerry’s brother Don was a fireman and engineer on the Newfoundland Railway and two of his other two brothers had worked as News Agents on the same railway’s passenger trains.
Gerry got his discharge from the RAF and because he had married a Canadian girl he was permitted to immigrate to Vancouver B.C. There he hired on with the CPR in May 1946. and his first trip firing was the next month on a yard assignment. Two years later, in early 1948 when he couldn’t hold a regular job firing on the coast he headed for Cranbrook but stopped off to check at Nelson where he found out that, because of a coal miners strike, he couldn’t hold a job at either Nelson or Cranbrook. He found temporary work an a local sawmill until the miners strike was over then went to Cranbrook where he held a job for only three weeks. By June 1948 he was informed that he could hold a position on the fireman’s spare board in Vancouver so, with family and belongings, he returned there.
Here’s Gerry’s tale about one trip, on a snowplough train, from Brookmere to Ruby Creek and back.
During the winter of 1951 I didn’t have enough seniority to hold down a firing job on the coast so I deadheaded, on passenger train number 12, to Brookmere on the Kettle Valley line, and arrived there at 22 o-clock on a Wednesday night. The next day I was called for 13-30 to fire a westbound snowplough train. The Engineer’s name was Gordon Coy and the train consisted of a large red and black CPR wedge snow plough, the locomotive (an oil burning 2-8-0 “N2” class 36 or 37 hundred), a flat car with two bulldozers on it, one car of odds and ends for the extra gang men, one train crew’s caboose and then General Manager Smith’s private car on the tail end. At 13-30, when we were ready to leave, the engineer said here comes General Manager Smith walking up from the tail end. Mr. Smith saw me and came up in cab to introduce himself and said “when we start ploughing don’t have the water level in the boiler too high account of going down hill”. When ploughing, the water could surge forward in the boiler and be carried over onto the cylinders. Smith also said “And no black smoke with this oil burner—right?” The only reply was “Yes Sir!”
We owned the railroad. There would be no other trains to look out for until we had cleared the snow off the line. It was downhill for the first 4 miles to Brodie where the line started up along the Coldwater River. A stop was made at Juliet to fill the tender with water. The snow wasn’t too heavy up to this point but as we neared the pusher turn around point, mileage 18 (the summit) at Coquihalla siding, the snow was much heavier and the farther west we went the deeper it got. That part of the Kettle Valley line followed the Coquihalla River all the way downgrade to Hope, 36 miles away. Little did we know that we wouldn’t arrive there for two days!
The snow was five or six feet deep and as we approached shed number 15 at mileage 29 near Iago, we saw that the weight of a large slide had collapsed some heavy 12 by 12 timbers down onto the track. This was at about 22-45 (10-45 pm) and when the engineer stopped the train General Manager Smith along with Road Foreman Jack Johnson and the Roadmaster came to have a look at the mess. When they came back to the locomotive the report was; “We’re not going to be able to do anything to-night, so we’ll just sit here and wait until morning.” Mister Smith came up into the locomotive and told the engineer and me to go back to his private car and go to bed, the Road foreman would look after the engine. He told us to see General Manager “Wong” (the cook) when we got back there and he would give us both some food and show us where we could sleep. Engineer Coy didn’t want to sleep in the boss’s bed but instead laid down on the lounge in the car’s vestibule while I climbed into Smith’s bed. Nice of him to let the Fireman use it while he stayed up. In middle of the night I woke to the sound of someone breathing in the bedroom. I peaked over the side of the bed and saw L.R. Smith in his sheepskin coat, curled up on the bedroom floor, sound asleep!
With the daylight, the bulldozers were unloaded and the train backed up to allow the machines to get down to the shed and start to remove those heavy timbers from the track. It was noon before that part of the railroad was cleared and the bulldozers were reloaded onto their flat car. We continued on westward ploughing snow that was quite deep by this time. Stopped and filled the tender at Iago, mileage 29.6 because the next water supply only consisted of six-inch pipes, sticking out from the bank above the tracks. The water coming out of these pipes was from lakes or streams high above the tracks. The next water tank was at Jessica, ten miles away at mile 40 and before we could get there, that day, the tender supply got quite low. Twice we had to stop and get some of the members of the extra gang to shovel snow, from the high snow banks beside the track, down into the tender to make water. The liquid level in the tender was so low a couple of times that we had to stop on a left hand curve where the locomotive leaned over to one side for the boiler feeding devices to be able to suck the water up. That was Friday and Gordon and I slept in the warm locomotive cab that night. The train crew had their caboose and in the train there was an old wooden boarding car where the ten extra gang men could eat and sleep.
Saturday we started in on the snow again. That took all day and we were good and hungry when we arrived in Hope at around midnight. Everyone had eaten up the food that they had carried with them so we had to go uptown to eat. Mr. Smith phoned to an establishment and explained the situation to the staff there and was he told to send the gang of us up and that we would all be fed. The members of our extra gang didn’t want to go. Instead they wanted to go to their own eating-place so Smith said, “I know what you guys are up to. I know what you want to go there for. (A drink of whiskey). Now come with me and eat with us or get back in the snowplough and I’ll lock the door and you can wait there until we get back”. They came uptown and ate with the rest of our bunch.
After we were all fed we took off from Hope up to Odlum, on the main line, then over to Ruby Creek where there was a bunkhouse, a watchman and facilities for servicing the locomotive. At this time we weren’t hungry any more but we were sure tired. Mr. Smith told us that we could stay at Ruby Creek for the weekend (Sunday) and that we would head back east first thing on Monday.
Monday morning it started all over again. No trouble getting over to Odlum and across the river to Hope but about nine miles east of there, near the water tank at Lear, we began to hit heavy snow again. We were all day fighting it again. It was the same procedure as the past week when we were westbound. Cut off from the train, bang away at the heavy snow, back and couple up to the rest of our cars and proceed uphill until the white stuff got really heavy again then cut off and hammer away with that wedge plough to where it wasn’t quite so deep and we could pull our short train and plough snow at the same time. At about 20 o-clock (8 pm) when it was dark with a moon shining we were on a long trestle when a signal to stop (one short whistle blast) was given by the plough foreman. The conductor came up over the tender and into the locomotive cab and told us that from back in the caboose they could see several small slides high up the mountain sides and that Mr. Smith says that we had better just stay right where we were until morning. We would be safe from slides while on the bridge and could start ploughing again when it was daylight.
At 6 am we got two whistles, which meant it was time to start work so we started to move off the trestle. When just the plough, the locomotive and the first car were off the bridge, a snow slide came down on top of us. That was it. We couldn’t move. The left side of the engine (the Fireman’s side) was on the mountainside and with the window open I got buried in heavy snow. With my left arm stuck out of the window and my right hand on the Firing valve, I was stuck there and couldn’t move. Gordon, the engineer, had to get the small sand scoop and use it to dig at the snow and get me out. With the help of the extra gang employees, the plough and locomotive also had to be shovelled out by hand - this took until about noon Tuesday.
Later, that same day, at the location of the collapsed # 15 shed, the plough bounced off the track because water had frozen and ice had built up above the height of the rails. Two scared looking men came bursting out of the door of the plough and into the snow bank on my side. (the canyon was on the other side!). Engineer Coy had put the train into emergency and the stop was quick. The plough hadn’t become uncoupled from the locomotive and that probably prevented it from going over bank and into Coquihalla River down below. It took considerable time to re-rail the snowplough then chip away the built up ice before we could proceed eastward up the grade. We fought heavy snow and numerous small slides all the rest of that day and after laying over at the summit for the night we didn’t arrive at our destination, Brookmere, until nearly noon on Wednesday. There we were finally able to dry our wet work clothes, eat and rest and reflect on what a hell of a week it had been. Seven days to make a round trip of only a hundred and twenty five miles, fighting heavy snow both ways.
A day or two later the slides that we had cleared came down again. They were cleared by another crew and I was able to make two round trips, on freight trains, to Ruby Creek before more heavy snow fell and brought down numerous slides, bigger, better and heavier ever. That was it! They gave up! The whole Coquihalla line was closed for the rest of the winter and all trains were rerouted, ninety miles farther, north through Merritt and down to the main line at Spences Bridge. I worked out of Brookmere for two months that winter but the trains all had to proceed both ways by way of Merritt and Spence’s Bridge.
The next time that you are driving over the Coquihalla Highway in your nice warm automobile, think of that winter in 1951 and the CPR crew that spent a week fighting snow there. What a different world it was just 50 years back!
