In 1946, the CPR was reorganizing and redeploying its world-wide assets and employees after the end of the Second World War. CPR shops had been used for the production of armoured vehicles, heavy guns and war materials. CPR trains and ships had been used to transport military personnel, weapons, supplies and commodities. And many CPR employees had joined the armed services.
After the war ended there must have been many organizational headaches as everything and everybody who survived the war returned to take up their pre-war functions. There would have been deferred maintenance on the permanent way and obsolete or worn-out equipment to write off and scrap after the wartime 'maximum effort'.
And in the future ... there would be post-war whittling down of the CPR's stock of western lodges and their 'insomnia-proof beds' as automobiles and new paved roads permanently changed the vacation pursuits of North Americans.
The wealthy could travel farther afield with the development of long-range piston-engined airliners and trans-ocean civilian airways. Between Canada and Europe, the airfield at Gander, Newfoundland was maintaining its essential wartime function as a stepping stone on the great circle route between continents.
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Back down to earth ...
Below, are the descriptions and images used for the CPR line from Golden to Banff in their 1946 guidebook Eastbound through the Canadian Rockies. At the end of this piece I have included parts of a Government of Canada topographic map with data from 1980 showing the line from Lake Louise to Field.
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| from: Google maps |
See the photo at the top of page 45, below right ...
When you visit there, Mount Victoria (and related peaks) seems to form a claustrophobia-inducing wall right at the end of Lake Louise. However, these mountains are considerably beyond the end of the lake. This height of land forms the boundary between Alberta and British Columbia.
