CPR 5844 emerges from the lower spiral tunnel, passing under its own train, 1986. Photo by David R. Spencer

An old map of the Spiral Tunnels.

When the Spiral Tunnels of the Canadian Pacific Railway were opened to traffic in August, 1909, they were hailed as one of the engineering wonders of the day. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1024x685, 699 KB) A Canadian Pacific Railway locomotive exiting the Lower spiral tunnel. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1024x685, 699 KB) A Canadian Pacific Railway locomotive exiting the Lower spiral tunnel. ... 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (800x601, 137 KB)An old map of the Spiral Tunnels. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (800x601, 137 KB)An old map of the Spiral Tunnels. ... The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR; AAR reporting marks CP, CPAA, CPI), known as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, is a Canadian Class I railway operated by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited. ... 1909 (MCMIX) was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Engineering applies scientific and technical knowledge to solve human problems. ...

In 1884, when Canadian Pacific Railway construction crews first encountered the Kicking Horse Pass they found at the summit a staggering drop with no room in either Kicking Horse Canyon or the Yoho Valley to lengthen the line so as to reduce the gradients. To save time and money the tracks were laid in a steep descent from the top of the pass to Field, dropping 237.5 feet to the mile (4.5%). 1884 (MDCCCLXXXIV) is a leap year starting on Tuesday (click on link to calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Thursday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Cranes are essential in large construction projects, such as this skyscraper In project architecture and civil engineering, construction is the building or assembly of any infrastructure. ... The Kicking Horse Pass (elevation 1627 m) is a mountain pass across the Continental Divide of the Canadian Rockies near the border between Alberta and British Columbia, and lying within Yoho and Banff National Parks. ... Front entrance to the townsite Field (51° 23′ 48″ N 116° 29′ 9″ W) is a town of approximately 300 people located in the Kicking Horse River valley of southeastern British Columbia, Canada within the confines of Yoho National Park. ...

Early railroaders named this hazardous stretch the Big Hill. They often worked in blizzards with temperatures dipping as low as -30°C or -40°C. There was the persistent danger of avalanches and rock slides as well as stalled engines and runaway trains. The Big Hill on the Canadian Pacific Railway main line in British Columbia, Canada, was the most difficult piece of track in all of Canada. ... Blizzards are characterized by high winds and blinding precipitation Sudden blizzards can cause terrible damage to infrastructure as well as danger to human life. ... Temperature is the physical property of a system which underlies the common notions of hot and cold; the material with the higher temperature is said to be hotter. ... A Himalayan avalanche. ... It has been suggested that Mudslide be merged into this article or section. ... A locomotive (from lat. ... For other types of train see train (disambiguation) In rail transport, a train consists of a single or several connected rail vehicles that are capable of being moved together along a guideway to transport freight or passengers from one place to another along a planned route. ...

By the early 1900s increased traffic over the line made it imperative that something be done about the bottleneck caused by the Big Hill. Engineers were faced with the problems of space due to the steep mountainsides on both sides of the divide. The problem was solved by creating two spiral tunnels into the two mountains to gain the track length needed to reduce the grade to an acceptable degree. John Edward Schwitzer, Senior Engineer Western Lines, Canadian Pacific Railway, was the designer. A disused railway tunnel now converted to pedestrian and bicycle use, near Houyet, Belgium A tunnel is an underground passage. ...

The rail line, going west from Hector to Field, encounters first the Upper Tunnel, or No. 1, as the railroaders call it, which cuts 992 m (3255') into Cathedral Mountain, turning through an angle of 288° and passing under itself to emerge 15 m (48') lower. The track then snakes northeast, crossing the Kicking Horse River and enters the Lower Tunnel, or No. 2, in Mount Ogden. This tunnel is 891 m (2922') long with a curvature of 226°, and emerges 15 m (50') below the entrance and continues westward. In this intricate system of spiraling track the trains run through the valley by three lines at different elevations and cross and re-cross the river by four bridges. The metre (Commonwealth English) or meter (American English) (symbol: m) is the SI base unit of length. ... The Kicking Horse River is a river located in the Canadian Rockies of southeastern British Columbia, Canada. ...

The monumental task entailed cutting through crystallized limestone of a widely distorted nature. Hardness and brittleness of the rock varied every few feet making drilling operations extremely difficult. These problems were aggravated by water seepage through the rock crevices which hampered progress on the downgrade ends of the tunnels and the high altitude (~1500 m or 5000') and severe winter weather that compounded the already adverse conditions under which the navvies worked. The contractor, MacDonnell and Gzowski, used at least two narrow gauge (3 foot) 2-6-0's on this work. Sedimentary, volcanic, plutonic, metamorphic rock types of North America. ... ... Winter is one of the four seasons of temperate zones. ... Find more information on Weather by searching one of Wikipedias sister projects: Dictionary definitions from Wiktionary Textbooks from Wikibooks Quotations from Wikiquote Source texts from Wikisource Images and media from Commons News stories from Wikinews Weather is an all-encompassing term used to describe all of the many and... Navvy is a shorter form of the word navigator and is particularly applied to describe the manual labourers working on major civil engineering projects. ... Narrow-gauge railways are railroads (railways) with track spaced at less than the standard gauge of 4 ft 8 in (1. ... SRC 89 working on the daily passenger train in 1993. ...

The result of the project was that the tunnels reduced the gradient of the track from as steep as 4.5% down to a maximum of 2.2%. The spiral configuration increased the track length by 12.5 km (8 miles). With this improvement, two engines of the same class as the four previously required could haul even heavier loads over the pass by means of this Canadian engineering marvel. In a range of hills, or especially of mountains, a pass (also gap, notch, col, saddle, bwlch or bealach) is a lower point that allows easier access through the range. ...

References

• Pole, Graeme (1999). The Spiral Tunnels and the Big Hill, Canmore: Altitude Publishing. ISBN 1-55153-907-1.

See also

• Spiral (railway)

A spiral is a hill climbing technique for railways when the topography rises faster than the train can climb. ...

External links

• Canadian Pacific Railway's Spiral Tunnels (model and diagram)
• Scenic Railroads Gallery of spiral tunnels. (Main Page)