How a steam train came to rest in Kamloops Lake almost 100 years ago

A steam train has been sitting in the murky depths of Kamloops Lake for more than 90 years and will likely remain there forever.

In 1934, CNR steam train 2727 hit a rock and plunged into the lake near a tunnel at the 10.5-mile mark near a hiking area called Battle Bluff.

In a message to iNFOnews.ca, local historian Andy Philpot confirmed the wreckage is still there.

“The wreck was resting at a level that could be dived to years ago but has since slid deeper into the lake,” Philpot said. “I think it may also be buried under debris that was dumped in the area from the tunnel work.”

Tracey Klohn runs a train museum at the BC Wildlife Park in Kamloops. During his career he worked for both CN Rail and Via Rail.

“I believe that was a wreck that happened at one of the portals at the tunnel at Tranquille,” Klohn said. “I seem to recall stories about scuba divers diving down to the wreck. It’s steep terrain there, right off the end of the ties is a hill into the lake.”

The harrowing story of how the train landed in the lake is documented in an archived paper by the Kamloops Daily Sentinel published in 1969, that also states the wreckage of the 2727 was discovered in 40 feet of water by members of the Kamloops Scuba Club.

In the crash, the engineer William George Harrison was killed and two other crewmen seriously injured. When the article was written, the only surviving member from the wreck was headend brakeman Jack Cottman who recounted the terrible ordeal that began on snowless January night in 1934 when the crew was preparing to leave Boston Bar for Kamloops.

They made it to Savona pulling 51 empty boxcars without any issues, and continued onto Kamloops early the following morning.

Roughly 10 miles from Kamloops, the train had to slow down around a rock bluff which was a blind corner that limited visibility to four or five cars.

“One giant rock was sitting squarely in the middle of the track and had spread the rails,” Cottman said in the Kamloops Daily Sentinel article. “I was sitting in the brakeman’s jump seat ahead of the fireman on the mountain side of the track. As soon as I saw the rock I yelled, ‘Soak her’ which in railroad parlance means ‘throw on the emergency brakes.’”

Cottman reached up and grabbed the handrail over the brakeman’s jump seat and had his feet on the window ledge when the train hit the rock.

“The engine began to sway from side to side and left the rails. When the engine hit the incline I guess she canted and threw me over the top. I slid down the bank and landed in a kind of pile of loose rock. The next thing I remember is rocks coming down on top of me. The engine must have gone completely over top of me and dragged down loose rocks which rolled over me.”

The engine landed in the lake with the engineer, Harrison, in it. 

A fellow crewman climbed up the tracks to a telephone located at the mouth of a tunnel 200 yards west of the accident and called the dispatcher for help.

Cottman pushed the rock off and crawled back up the tracks where he sat in a patrolman’s shack waiting for the rescue train. He ended up in the hospital with a broken leg and ankle, a smashed instep and three broken vertebrae.

According the Sentinel article, local newspapers reported two divers travelled from Vancouver later that day and recovered Harrison’s body the following morning.

Very few steam engines are in operation in BC today. Several are kept in museums, while others are in storage and yet others are left at the bottoms of waterbodies.

“Steam engines were labor intensive and they used a lot of coal and had to stop frequently to replenish the boilers,” Klohn with the train museum said. “Diesel electric motors came along and that increased the distance a locomotive could go without any maintenance.”

He said steam engines are not retrieved from lakes because of the cost of retrieval and the lack of value of the metal.

Long-time Kamloops scuba diver Blaine Johnson has not done much diving in Kamloops Lake because the visibility is so low.

“There is a layer of pumice-style sediment floating below around 15 feet that continues beyond 60 feet,” he said in a message to iNFOnews.ca. “Lights are almost pointless other than to see your depth and pressure fittings. Diving in the winter months may be better but I’ve not tried.

“I believe the train settled on the one side of the tunnel on the north side of the lake. I found some info a few years back about divers that had located it. They said it was not at 40 feet anymore but 60 to 80 feet deep.”

There are steam trains sunk in Anderson Lake and Seton Lake, both near Lillooet, that both took a plunge after hitting rock slides in the 1944 and 1950 respectively.