The Spiral Tunnels open and the Big Hill is retired

Assembled from 20 blocks · 1 evidence · 20 related

1. Story
2. After three years' work, two looped tunnels bored into the valley walls at Kicking Horse Pass — one under Cathedral Mountain, one through Mount Ogden — lengthen the line enough to bring the ruling grade down from about 4.5 per cent to 2.2. The Big Hill had been worked for a quarter of a century with runaway spurs and helper engines. The tunnels are the moment a railway pays, retrospectively, for the survey it declined to do in 1884.
3. Knowledge
4. Canadian Pacific transcontinental main line
5. Ruling gradient
6. The Spiral Tunnels open and the Big Hill is retired
7. Connections
8. Canadian Pacific transcontinental main line
9. Ruling gradient
10. Ruling gradient
11. The last spike is driven at Craigellachie
12. The Spiral Tunnels open and the Big Hill is retired
13. Trans-Siberian Railway
14. Canadian Pacific transcontinental main line
15. The main-line steam locomotive
16. The last spike is driven at Craigellachie
17. The Spiral Tunnels open and the Big Hill is retired
18. The Severomuysky Tunnel opens under the BAM's worst obstacle
19. Evidence
20. Supports the Big Hill's original grade of about 4.4–4.5 per cent over Kicking Horse Pass and its reduction to 2.2 per cent by the Spiral Tunnels, built 1907–1909. V55 verification basis: the Parks Canada page was returned in search but not fetched; the grade figures and the 1 September 1909 opening were carried in accompanying Canadian rail-history summaries and differ between sources on 4.4 versus 4.5 per cent.