If you’re driving east of Hope up Coquihalla way
Take heed of what I’m telling you and make the trip by day.
To drive by night is scary for there’s no telling when
The Kettle Valley Ghost Train will fly those grades again.

You may call it superstition but I know this isn’t so,
(And I know they tore her tracks up over forty years ago)
But when men have built a railroad where a railroad shouldn’t be
And fought with mountain rock and snow through winters misery,
And dared to battle nature, and sometimes men have won,
Their wounds and scars stay with them long after the job is done.
Long after their fears and curses, long after the blood and sweat,
They’re haunted still by memories of struggles they can’t forget.

They remember daring blasting crews that worked the steepest slopes,
How they drilled and shot their dynamite while tied to rock with ropes;
And those men who died on mountain sides when snows above let go
And swept the work trains, track and all, to the river gorge below.
But the tunnels, bridges and cuts, they made the rails run true,
And for every hundred feet of track the grade rose two-point two.

Officials drove the last spike home and then they rode the line,
And though they praised the workmanship, pronouncing it as fine,
They scheduled trains with passengers to run the pass by night,
Lest timid soles aboard the cars should panic at the sight
Of canyons yawing far below, and chatter through their teeth
“This bloody railroad’s built on air, with nothing underneath!”

And did they give the stations names like Sheer or Thunder Ridge?
Or Avalanche, or Hanging Rock, Slide Creek or Windy Bridge?
No, they gave them names from Shakespeare (to calm all thoughts of fear)
Like Romeo and Juliet and Jessica and Lear.

The last spike had been driven but the battle still raged on,
For train and engine crews took up the battle, never won,
Against those blizzards when winter still was king,
And it snows the rate a foot an hour and smothers everything,
And telegraph wires are buried, and slides maroon the trains
When cuts that snowplows fought to clear are drifted in again.

When the line was at last abandoned it wasn’t the men who lost;
But the decision made by Brass Hats who counted up the cost
Of fighting a loosing battle with foe who always won
In the economic warfare of freight rated charged per ton.

So they salvaged rails and bridges, with scarcely a thought of respect
They demolished snow-sheds and trestles that men gave their lives to erect.

And all that remains to show that trains once had brought life and sound to those hills
Are high mountain tunnels whose roofs bear coal smoke that’s showing there still.

It’s in those mountain tunnels that the Ghost Train hides by day
Until another railroader is due to pass away.
It’s then that the Ghost Train flies again and her whistle mouths his name,
In a way he’s never heard before yet somehow sounds the same,
And her headlight shines upon him and makes his eyes grow dim
And he hears her bell a-tolling and he knows it tolls for him.

It’s the Kettle Valley legend; When a railroader gets old
And his legs can’t reach the ladders and life’s boiler fires grow cold,
When his eyes can’t read the orders and he’s running out of steam—
That’s when he sees the Ghost Train and hears her whistle scream.

The great Dispatcher’s calling him and he knows the reason why:
He’s on a one-way dead-head to that Terminal in the sky
Where there’s never a wreck or washout, nor slide or runaway
And he’ll always win at poker and its payday every day.
The red board set against him and he’s reached the end of track,
And at last he’s got his miles in and he won’t be heading back.

You may never see the Ghost Train but still you’d best beware;
Just because you cannot see her doesn’t mean she isn’t mean she isn’t there:
That patch of fog on the road ahead that blocks your headlight beam,
That fog may not be fog at all but K.V. Ghost Train steam.

So if you’re driving east of Hope up Coquihalla way,
Remember what I’ve told you and be sure to drive by day;
To drive by night is scary for there’s no telling when
The Kettle Valley Ghost Train will fly those grades again.