Graeme Pole’s Gravity, Steam and Steel: An Illustrated Railway History of Rogers Pass offers an exhaustive technical and spatial history of the Canadian Pacific Railway corridor across the Selkirk Range in the Columbia-Shuswap region. The work details the staggering logistical demands of overcoming mountain grades and avalanche tracks between Golden, Glacier, and Revelstoke, tracing the physical progression from early timber trestles and elaborate loop tracks to the completion of the Connaught Tunnel in 1916 and the Mount Macdonald Tunnel in 1988. Pole examines the severe physical environment that dictated railway operations, highlighting the specialized rotary snowplows, push engines, and railway work camps that anchored daily operations along the Illecillewaet River. Richly illustrated with historic engineering schematics and archival photographs, the book documents the human labor and technological systems that tamed the most formidable mountain crossing in western Canada.

British Columbia Rogers Pass, Canadian Pacific Railway Company History, Canyon Hot Springs (B.C.), Glacier National Park (B.C.) History, History, Mountain railroads British Columbia Selkirk Mountains, Railroad engineering British Columbia History, Rogers Pass (B.C.) History, Selkirk Mountains (B.C.) History

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.