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Caption: Tree covered mountains stand tall over Lake Okanagan and the town of Kelowna where we find CNR oil burner 4302 sitting in the yard. 4302 is T-4-a 2-10-2 built in 1929 by CLC as part of 15 locomotive order. The CNR yard is long gone today, with the site now being occupied by condos, apartments, and Sunset Drive.
Rails first reached Kelowna about 1909 on the Canadian Pacific Railway Okanagan line, running south from the transcontinental mainline at Sicamous to Vernon, then heading west to the lake at Okanagan Landing. Cars were then barged to Kelowna, and offloaded by teams of horses into the small yard at the south end of town at the corner of Water Street and Smith Avenue. Records show this operation continued into the 1950's using a truck and is detailed in this article from the Kelowna Daily Courier.
The Canadian National Railway would complete it's line to Kelowna in September, 1925, completing a line which was begun in 1912 by the Canadian Northern Railway. With this line built, CP would operate over it via trackage rights from Vernon in addition to the car ferry. Passenger service was initially provided by an oil-electric car but was later replaced by standard equipment within a few months. The CNR station, built in 1926, and opening January 4, 1927, served the passenger trains until 1967, when service was cancelled, and the station converted to a freight and express shed. Designated a heritage structure in 1991, the station still stands today as The Train Station Pub.
As traffic dwindled both CN and CP wanted to dispose of their Okanagan lines. The Omnitrax shortline, Okanagan Valley Railway, took over the CPR operations in 1998 and operated through 2009 when their largest customer, the Owen-Illinois glass plant, shut down. The Kelowna Pacific Railway would take over the CN operations in February, 2000. The railway would go into receivership on Friday, July 5, 2013, with the rails being removed during 2015. Passenger service briefly returned to Kelowna in 1999 as the Okanagan Valley Wine Train, operated by FunTrain Canada Inc., part of Nagel Tours of Edmonton. The train, operating from Kelowna to Vernon, ran until 2003 when the operation was suspended due to lack of funding.
Thanks to Steve Host and Dan Dell'Unto for editing assistance.
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These 4300 class locos were regulars on both freight and passenger trains in the Okanagan.
Also , at one point, there was a a2/1 sleeper from Vancouver via the Continental Limited to Kamloops where it was switched to the Okanagan train. The sleepers assigned were the “Vernon” and the “Kelowna”. At an earlier time there were Edmonton / Kelowna 12/1 sleepers also, which were late cut back to Blue River / Kelowna before being dropped entirely. I think that for a brief time prior to RDC’s taking over, the Vancouver sleepers were 4 / 8 / 4 “E” series cars.