Spiraling Back a Few Days

One of our trip highlights was the Spiral Tunnels in British Columbia - Kicking Horse Pass (that name is a whole other story). The trains had previously had to climb and descend a 4.5% grade, which is far beyond safe. In fact the only good news was that when a train derailed, which often happened, it was going so fast it's wreck landed so far off the tracks that following trains were not inconvenienced by debris. The government learned that the Swiss had been building spiral tunnels to cut the grade, and so they tried that technique here. When completed, the grade was cut to 2.5%. One of the spirals is below a tourist overlook and exhibit - that's the view in the photo above. We were lucky to see a long train, and so have a photo of the same train in three places at once. The lowest point is the middle of the photo where the train enters the spiral tunnel. It then comes out at the top and continues uphill until it passes close to the overlook. After this, it goes through another tunnel. We think it's very cool - maybe even better than Tehachipi in California.