Canadian Pacific transcontinental main line

node · earth · Eastern Canada to British Columbia

The line from Montreal to the Pacific completed on 7 November 1885, when Donald A. Smith drove the last spike at Craigellachie in Eagle Pass, British Columbia — bending the first spike, which he kept. It was built to a political deadline: a transcontinental railway was British Columbia's condition for entering Confederation. Speed of construction was paid for in gradient. Rather than wait for a tunnel through Mount Stephen, the builders took the Big Hill over Kicking Horse Pass at about 4.4 to 4.5 per cent, among the steepest adhesion grades ever worked by a main-line railway, and lived with runaways for a quarter of a century until the Spiral Tunnels opened on 1 September 1909 and brought the ruling grade down to 2.2 per cent. Every scenic passenger service on this line today is riding a compromise made in 1884.