Canadian Pacific: Stand Fast, Craigellachie!

by Greg McDonnell

A tribute to one of North America's oldest still running railway companies. This landmark tribute to the Canadian Pacific Railway features the work of many of North America's top rail photographers. Remarkable photography and essays cover the entire CPR system, from the east coast to the west coast including Nova Scotia's Dominion Atlantic lines and Vancouver Island's Esquimalt & Nanaimo. Some of the best steam and diesel photographs ever published appear here along with 1950s-vintage photos of steeple-cab electrics and passenger trains on the Electric Lines the Grand River Railway and the Lake Erie & Northern. Canadian Pacific Railway captures the pleasure of lingering in wood-frame stations where time was marked to the beat of a Seth Thomas clock, the stainless-steel glamor of the Canadian, the gritty drama of SD40s grinding up mountain grades, and the loneliness of the prairie.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published October 4, 2003

Reviews

[ALLEN · Rating 5 out of 5]

Craigellachie in British Columbia is where the newly constructed Canadian Pacific Railway tracks heading east and west were joined in 1885, and as such is analogous to Promontory Point in Utah in the USA where the two branches of the Chicago to San Francisco tracks met in 1869. Author and photographer Greg McDonnell, a specialist in railways, has done a simply marvelous job here, both in history and nostalgia, in this high-quality "coffee-table" volume. Most of it is in color, all of it in his words. I know of no better effort regarding the mighty CPR.

Image: The "Last Spike" gift shop, formerly a CP station at Craigellachie, British Columbia:

[Matthew Tolton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fantastic photography.