A huge number of railway branchlines were built across the Western Canadian Prairies in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Crazy as it seems, they planned even more and this includes the proposed line spoken of here. It was to run north from Empress Alberta and while considered to some degree, nothing really happened. Still, it’s an interesting peek into the minds of an ambitious railway, always in search of new markets to serve.
Let’s jump back to the railway landscape of that era. Just look at any old map and see for yourself how many lines once existed. It was a spaghetti-bowl of track, running this way and that with reckless abandon, to nearly every town or village. They did it with what appears to be little forethought in respects to the long term viability of the whole scheme. Notwithstanding, they built at an insane pace and did so for decades.
Planned Railway: Empress Alberta – envisioned, but never built. A short railway history with Chris Doering & Connie Biggart (BIGDoer/Synd)
Thanks to “Byron Robb” for sponsoring this and many other posts at BIGDoer.com – we’d be lost without you. Be like Byron…
Most of the aforementioned lines are gone and relegated to history now. Ditto for the those stillborn, that is partly built never finished. A few like this one only existed on paper and were never meant to be. They had plans, but soon had second thoughts. It’s a rare case of a railway siding with caution during a frenzied period of building.
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The Canadian Pacific Railway built a line through Empress Alberta in the 1910s. It connected with the firm’s mainline at Bassano Alberta, paralleled it a bit to the north for some three hundred and fifty clicks, before the two met up again a bit west of Swift Current Saskatchewan. While planned as a major secondary, in the end and mostly so, it was just another sleepy “grain branch”.
Even so, a good amount of coal traffic polished the rails as well, in the late-1920s to the 1950s period. It came from mines out in the Drumheller area to the west, via a connecting line, and continued east through Empress into Saskatchewan.
Around the time the coal started moving, the CPR investigated the possibility of markets to the north. Many folks in the old days used coal for home heating and the demand on the cold, cold prairies, was steady. That was not just in rural places, but also in the big cities. As a commodity to be hauled by rail, coal paid better than grain and any chance to exploit an opportunity was given at least some consideration. A second line north off the Empress line entered the discussion.
They explored the possibility of a direct route to the major centres of Edmonton to the north or Saskatoon to the northeast, or maybe even a line to each. Reports, variously, make mention of these possibilities and many others, but the two cities seemed to be top contenders. There’s were many untapped markets up in those directions, so the railway took notice.
The lines looked feasible. Just run new steel off the tail end the Empress wye (a Y-shaped arrangement of tracks where locomotives turned around) and away you go. Easy as pie here on the flat prairies and hardly any work at all. But there was one problem, one major problem, one costly problem and it was standing in the way. This was the Red Deer River and it’s right here at the very end of the wye, so at the very start of the planned extension.
The Red Deer was wide and a bridge would have cost a fortune.
After sizing up the situation, the railway quickly deemed it not worth the effort and and with that they shelved any plans. Then they and everyone else forgot of it all.
Did the railway seriously consider the idea or was it water cooler talk? Considering what we found during research, they at best “toyed” with the notion, but never gave it serious consideration. Sill, they did some very basic preliminary work, so office planning and reports, but nothing really out in the field.
It would appear everyone involved knew from the the start that the crossing was a deal breaker and there was no dancing around it. Today, few people know of these plans, even long time residents of Empress and railway enthusiasts.
The Canadian Pacific abandoned and pulled up their line into Empress in the 1990s. The line east had been truncated some decades before and Empress was then at the end of track on a stub-ended branch. The old roadbed is mostly intact including the old wye tracks and we found lots of “clinker” scattered all over the place at this spot. That remains of burned coal from locomotive boilers and it was often used for ballast or fill.
The tail track extends right down to the Red Deer River on a high embankment, but it’s now cut in two by a farmer field access road.
From here, one can clearly see just how challenging the crossing would be. There’s a channel, a broad island and then the main part of the river (the view of it is blocked in our photo by that island). Then there’s a wide expanse of valley and a climb up. The whole thing, bridges and fill approaches would have easily been a kilometre or two in length. It’s plain to see why they balked and moved on.
Interestingly, the turning wye in Empress is mostly in Saskatchewan, save for the very end of the tail track, which bends back into Alberta. The provincial border, the 4th Meridian, runs just east of the town site. A sign by the old railbed marks the line.
This was not the first proposal of this kind and railway/land promotors championed Empress (“The Town of Opportunities”) some time before. They envisioned it as the centre-point of many lines back around the time the railway first arrived. It was already going to be a divisional point (centre of local operations), and this made it a natural choice as a junction for additional lines.
This: “The Railway Company advertised the location as a place of some importance to be; a supply centre for a wide district; a divisional point on the line; perhaps a centre for two railway systems. It’s where railways branch and rivers meet.” – Golden Jubilee Empress 1914-1964.
The following route were in consideration at the time:
1) Lethbridge to Empress to Saskatoon Saskatchewan and on to Hudson Bay in Manitoba. 2) Edmonton to Empress to St Paul in the US and on to Chicago. 3) Alberta Central Railroad (no mention where it’d go). 4) Calgary to Bassano to Empress and on to Swift Current Saskatchewan (stated as the main line, cutting off 56 miles on CPR present western route). 5) Moose Jaw Saskatchewan to Empress and on to Calgary. 6) Empress to Kerrobert Saskatchewan Branch.
A few things. That’s some ambitious plans, especially those down to the US or way up north to Hudson Bay. Most were not a direct product of the Canadian Pacific Railway and instead came from the minds of promoters. It’s likely the railway did little to downplay them, if they were even aware. It’s suggested that some of these line would come from rival railway Grand Trunk Pacific and this was virgin territory for the firm.
Number 4 ended up being true and the Bassano-Empress-Swift Current line was completed, but it always remained a secondary route in nature.
Empress is home to nicely restored train station and it can be see off in the distance in one photo. This building has appeared in a few BIGDoer.com reports over the years. We saw it not long after the last train visited, and before locals fixed it up and several times since. We did some comparison shots in and around this point in the past as well. The station can be seen here: Empress Alberta at the 4th Meridian.
This article dates back to 2016 and has been reposted for your pleasure with updates, but the original photos. Enjoy!
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Date of adventure: July, 2016. Location: Empress, Alberta. Article references and thanks: Book – Golden Jubilee Empress 1914-1964, select snippets of the Empress Express Newspaper (1920s-1930s mostly), the UofC for so much, railway historian Larry Buchan, Charles Bohi and Leslie Kozma.
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