Among the mighty peaks of British Columbia’s West Kootenay region, in a little place called Rosebery, there was a most unusual railway operation. For a time. On account of challenging topography, the Canadian Pacific Railway (under the Nakusp and Slocan Charter) built a branchline physically isolated from the rest of the system. To span the gap, trains were loaded onto barges and floated up and down Slocan Lake.
How unique is that?
Built to tap the vast mineral resources and timber riches of the area, this line, incredibly, remained in use well into modern times. It was no doubt a headache operationally, a costly endeavour, and an amazing curiosity for those of us into trains. Or anyone witnessing the operation and wondering just what was going on. By the time this service ended, there was nothing else like it anywhere.
Rosebery BC Trains and Barges: two scenes 50-60 years apart. Time travelling with Chris Doering & Connie Biggart (BIGDoer/Synd)
Thanks to “Sharon Wingenbach” for sponsoring this and other posts at BIGDoer.com. Be like Sharon…
It’s then and Now time, so read on. This is a BIGDoer Classic from early 2019, using the original photos but with updates and a rewrite.
In the then photo, circa 1960s, we see a laden barge either just arriving or in the process of leaving the Rosebery transfer slip. Without knowing, it’s hard to tell the direction of travel, but the wake in back (far right, above the action) and lack of one ahead of the barge suggests arriving. They were probably just creeping along.
In any case, this is where trains transitioned from water to land or land to water.
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On visiting the same spot in 2018, we see what differs – most obvious the railway is long gone – and what’s remained the same – those majestic mountains. They stand fast for all time. Come back in a couple centuries and no doubt they’d cut the same profile. If the world lasts that long.
The CPR invaded Southern British Columbia in the 1890s and did so with reckless abandon. They built lines this way and that, servicing mines and lumber operations. They also served a huge smelter where they processed all the minerals produced in the area. A map showed a spider-web of branchlines, but they’re gone now.
The section of track served by the train barge ran from Rosebery to Nakusp to the north and by way of a second line south. That one headed to New Denver before trending east to the mines of the Silvery Slocan near Sandon. Construction of these spanned the years 1892 to 1895. The line to Nakusp ran right below the shooting position for these images and in the old photo is marked by that leaning line-pole. Look for it bottom left.
From Rosebery the barge travelled south down Slocan Lake, where trains would offload. That’s a journey of some thirty kilometres on the water. Once back on land, they would head further south again and make connections to the CPR’s Southern Mainline using the Slocan (City) branch.
It was a rather time consuming and complicated way to get a train from A to B, but the rugged nature of the area precluded building a railway connection between the two points. The CPR and its customers accepted this, even in spite of the cost or inconvenience. There was after all, freight to move, and lots of it in the early days.
The old Nakusp and Slocan into Sandon lasted into the 1950s and the track into New Denver followed suit in the 1970s (or thereabouts). The Rosebery to Nakusp section, amazingly, lasted into 1988 or 1989 (depending on the source). The railway worked to rid itself of this money losing operation for some time, before finally given approval.
No doubt at the CPR there was a collective sigh of relief when the okay to end it all was finally granted. As a highly regulated industry back then, you needed to jump through hoops before shutting down a line. Surely, it was a money loser for decades.
By the end service was sporadic, with trains visiting only as needed. Sometimes it’d be weeks between runs or even more. The only freight moved at that time was some outbound lumber and utility poles, with some inbound fuel shipments. The mineral traffic dried up decades earlier.
Before Team BIGDoer, it was just Chris and he visited Rosebery in the summer of 1989 to see the transfer site. That’s less than a year after the last train, but before they removed everything. Come take a look here: Railway Barge Slip Rosebery BC (1989).
About six or seven cars, plus the then mandatory caboose, and the locomotive was about all they could haul per barge, per run. It’s not much really and at busier times they might haul two barges. We’ve seen evidence of this in older photos. Or they might just run more often. In the then photo traffic looks light that day.
The locomotive for this train is a Montreal Locomotive Works model S4 and we think it’s #7110. It’s a bit hard to make out in the photo, but all the data points to it. When this same photo was posted online, old timers seemed in agreement with this.
The CPR owned twenty of these locomotives, built in the years 1949-1953 and they were well suited for switching work or pulling short branchline freights like this. If it’s #7110, then it dates from 1952. Most of these locomotives lasted into the 1980s.
The locomotive wears the old colours of the CPR, so Tuscan Red and Grey. The caboose (or van) was pretty typical of the era, as was the boxcar.
The tug powering the barge is out of view to the right. One closer examination, we can see two at least men left of the caboose, and perhaps one back on land.
The slip is a frail looking Rube Goldberg contraption, mounted on rail wheels which allowed it to be repositioned (with the help of a locomotive) in relation to varying lake levels. The slip rides atop the same tracks used by the train and these continue down into the water. Once where it needed to be, you anchored it in place somehow.
Once off the barge, trains entered a small yard out of sight to the left.
We don’t know the date of the then photo, but the 1960s seems a good bet. We base that on a number of factors, one being that the photographer, who we’ll touch on in a bit, seemed most active then. Plus we know that style of locomotive was assigned to the area in around that time and #7110 is sometimes mentioned specifically.
There is zero evidence of the barge slip in the Now photo, nor of the tracks leading to it. Still, if one wanders about the area where the yards once were, bits and pieces connected back to the railway can be found there. The tracks are gone and there’s new buildings and the trees have grown in.
The most notable remains is steel bridge over crystal clear Wilson Creek. The structure is now incorporated into the Nakusp and Slocan Railway Trail, that you can hike or bike.
There’s also some small sheds that look suspiciously railways related.
The Selkirk Mountains in back are timeless. There’s some big hills out this way! The spit of land in front has changed profile, but otherwise it looks much as it did. Minus the train stuff, that is.
There is a sunken barge just beyond the former slip location and at low water, some of it can be seen. The tip of it is showing in our photo – on the shoreline about a quarter of the way in from the left. Kind of in the distance, but it’s there. We might just to have to go back and look into it. We didn’t know of it at the time of our photo and were only made aware of it during research.
This was not the only lake barge service on the Canadian Pacific. To the east and the next mountain range over, there were several isolated branchlines and spurs similarly served along Kootenay Lake. More rail barges plied the Upper Arrow Lakes (out of Nakusp) and some lakes of the Okanagan. A number of these operations lasted into the 1970s.
The then photo comes from fine folks at the Lost Kootenays Facebook Page and is part of the Ellis Anderson Collection. It worked out so nice! Ellis was a busy photographer back in the 1960s and 1970s. He captured day to day life in the area and lots of train stuff. We looked through more from his collection and it left us mesmerized. He took his camera everywhere it seems.
If you have an old photo you think should get the BIGDoer Then and Now treatment, please let us know. It needs be your copyright (so from a family collection, for example) or in the public domain showing a scene from days past. It need not be train themed, and can show a street, building or something scenic, where a comparison like this can applied. When they work, and not all do, the results can be incredible.
We hope you liked this post as much as we did presenting it. It was so cool to match it up, delve into the scene and revel in the history of it all. That’s why we do it.
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Date of adventure: Ca 1960s and September 2018. Location: Rosebery, British Columbia. Article references and thanks: Ellis Anderson via the Lost Kootenays Facebook Page, Book – The Skyline Limited: The Kaslo and Slocan Railway by Turner & Wilkie. Also, the Arrow Lakes Historical Society, our friends in nearby Sandon BC who let us crash there for free, the Internet Brain Trust in general and Canadian Trackside Guides.
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