Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

 278 ENGINEERING WONDERS OF THE WORLD. white’s creek bridge, spuzzum, b.c. {Photo, C.P.R. Company.) and the deep sobs of the exhausts—the latter quickening suddenly into short, excited pants as the sand failed to give the wheels their necessary grip on the slippery rails—created the impression of some Titanic monster labour- ing to accomplish a desperate task almost too much for even its superhuman strength. At short intervals down this hill Safety , , , Switches Were Piaced switches opening into spurs of rail track lead- ing upward into the forest. Thus, if by chance part of a train broke away on the hill, it could be caught before it gathered sufficient momentum to leap to destruction at the first sharp bend. This gradient increased the operating costs enormously. A dozen pusher locomotives had A Fresh Location of Track near Hector. to be kept at hand as auxiliaries, three engines being required to do the work of one on other sections of the line. So numerous were the obligations incurred by the railway immediately through traffic commenced, that it was not until the year 1908 that the original location was re- sumed, the contract price for the seven miles being 1,500,000 dollars. This includes two spiral tunnels and two steel bridges over the Kicking Horse River separated by only a few hundred yards. On the section from the top of the Kicking Horse Pass to the mouth of the Beaver (73 j miles) there are seven tunnels, totalling 2,152 feet. The Kicking Horse River is crossed nine