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Canadian Pacific Railway: Map, History, Logo, Photos

Last revised: September 17, 2026

By: Adam Burns

The Canadian Pacific Railway Company was incorporated on February 16, 1881, to bind British Columbia to the rest of Canada. Donald A. Smith drove the last spike at Craigellachie, British Columbia, on November 7, 1885. The first transcontinental passenger train left Montreal on June 28, 1886. Slogan: Spans The World. Reporting mark CP. It was a private company from the charter—cash subsidy, 25 million acres, and a political promise, but never a Crown road. The other Canadian transcontinental, assembled by Ottawa from bankrupt systems, is Canadian National.

Grain, coal, potash, sulphur, containers, and a hotel-and-ship empire made it more than a railroad. The Soo Line, the Milwaukee Road core, the Delaware & Hudson, the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern, and the old Bangor & Aroostook country through Central Maine & Quebec put CP into the American Midwest and New England. On April 14, 2023, the combination with Kansas City Southern became Canadian Pacific Kansas City.

Tom Murray, in Canadian Pacific Railway, is the later corporate book. William Kaye Lamb, in History of the Canadian Pacific Railway, is the construction and eastern expansion. Pierre Berton’s The National Dream and The Last Spike are the Canadian narrative of 1871–85.

A Canadian Pacific publicity photograph: C424s passing through the Spiral Tunnels, crossing beneath their own train on Kicking Horse Pass at the Alberta / British Columbia border, 1968.

On this page: At a glance · A Pacific railway · February 16, 1881 · Shield and mountains · November 7, 1885 · East of Callander · Short Line and the Soo · 1938 maps · Spiral Tunnels, Crowsnest, Connaught · Spans the World · Steam and diesel · Named trains · CP Rail, VIA, Calgary · Soo, Milwaukee, D&H, DM&E · April 14, 2023

At a glance

Peak mileage is the Canadian system in the 1930s. 2020 miles and revenue are the company before Kansas City Southern. Information compiled September 16, 2026.

The classic Canadian Pacific Railway logo. Author’s work.

Confederation and a Pacific railway

Canada became a Dominion on July 1, 1867. British Columbia entered on July 19, 1871 on the understanding that a railway would reach the Pacific. The United States had already bought Alaska. Union Pacific and the Central Pacific had met at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869. Jay Cooke and James J. Hill were looking at routes that could pull British Columbia, or more, into the American orbit. Ottawa’s answer was a Canadian line.

Sir John A. Macdonald’s first attempt collapsed in the Pacific Scandal of 1873. That Canada Pacific Railway Company, tied to Sir Hugh Allan, was not this railroad. The Conservative government fell. Alexander Mackenzie’s Liberals let the Department of Public Works start pieces of a government road, including the Lake Superior–Manitoba section from 1875. Macdonald returned in 1878. American contractor Andrew Onderdonk began the Fraser Canyon work from Yale, British Columbia, on May 15, 1880, still on a government contract, before there was a Canadian Pacific Railway Company to receive the line.

February 16, 1881

In October 1880 a new syndicate signed with Ottawa: build the railway for $25 million in credit and 25 million acres of land, with surveys paid and a twenty-year property-tax exemption. Parliament incorporated the Canadian Pacific Railway Company on February 16, 1881. George Stephen, president of the Bank of Montreal, headed it. With him were Donald A. Smith (later Lord Strathcona), Richard B. Angus, Duncan McIntyre, John S. Kennedy, and James J. Hill. Hill wanted a southerly line that would feed his St. Paul & Pacific, ancestor of the Great Northern. The charter said an all-Canadian route. Hill left in 1883 and became a rival until Canadian National existed to take that role.

William Cornelius Van Horne, a Yankee from the Milwaukee and the Chicago & Alton, was hired as general manager in 1882. He said he would lay 500 miles that season. Floods ate the spring. He still put down more than 400 miles of main track, plus sidings. The projected line ran west from Callander, Ontario—where the Canada Central ended—about 1,900 miles to the Pacific. The Canada Central itself came under CP within months of the charter.

The Shield and the mountains

Two landscapes tried to stop the work. East of Winnipeg the Precambrian Shield is rock, bog, lake, and no local traffic. West of Calgary the Rockies and the Selkirks are worse. Onderdonk’s Fraser and Thompson canyons were already under construction from the west: 127 miles toward Kamloops Lake, the line hugging cliffs where a wagon road barely existed. Major A.B. Rogers, another American, picked Kicking Horse Pass at 5,338 feet for the continental divide, then Rogers Pass through the Selkirks. Calgary to Winnipeg, more than 800 miles of prairie, was the easy piece. It was in service by August 1883.

In British Columbia the government contractors hired on the order of 17,000 Chinese laborers. They took the rock work and the explosives. Historians put the death toll in the hundreds, commonly 600–800. European immigrants and, in the Kicking Horse country, Stoney Nakoda labor filled other gangs. Money ran short. The Railway Relief Bill of January 31, 1884, added $22.5 million in loans. The original Kicking Horse descent, the Big Hill, was built at 4.5 percent to save time and cash. It was a temporary mountain railroad, and everyone knew it.

November 7, 1885

In March 1885 the North-West Rebellion broke out in the Saskatchewan country. Van Horne, in Ottawa, offered to move troops to Qu’Appelle in ten days over unfinished track. The first trains did it in nine. The government then reorganized the company’s debt and lent another $5 million. That loan, as much as the last spike, is why the railroad opened when it did.

On November 7, 1885, at Craigellachie—named for George Stephen’s ancestral village in Moray, Scotland—Donald Smith drove an ordinary iron spike. No gold. A photograph, a telegram to Macdonald, and the mountain work was closed. The Lake Superior gap had been spiked a few days earlier near Jackfish, Ontario. Winnipeg–Callander via Port Arthur was already in. The transcontinental existed. It was still a rough railroad: light rail, wooden bridges, and that 4.5 percent hill. The first passenger train left Montreal’s Dalhousie Station at 8 p.m. on June 28, 1886, and reached Port Moody at noon on July 4. CP had already decided the real terminus was Granville, renamed Vancouver. The first official train into Vancouver arrived May 23, 1887.

East of Callander

A prairie-and-Pacific railroad without Toronto and Montreal would have starved. More than 70 percent of Canada’s people then lived in Ontario and Quebec, Grand Trunk territory. Early talk of CP in the west and Grand Trunk in the east died as soon as Stephen looked at a traffic map. He tried for the Great Western, Windsor to Niagara Falls. Grand Trunk bought it first. He had two other doors.

The Canada Central, already in the charter, opened east of Callander down the Ottawa valley in August 1882. Stephen already held the Credit Valley Railway, Toronto to St. Thomas, 121 miles; CP leased it on November 30, 1883. St. Thomas met the Canada Southern, a Vanderbilt / Michigan Central competitor of the Grand Trunk between Buffalo and Detroit. The missing Ottawa–Toronto link was the Ontario & Quebec, an 1871 charter in friendly hands. The 193.8-mile line was largely up by August 1884. CP took a 999-year lease of the O&Q on January 4, 1884. Windsor Station in Montreal opened in 1889 as the company’s front door.

Between 1885 and 1900 the map grew by about 2,500 miles. No North American railroad added corridor faster in those years. The Grand Trunk never forgave it.

The Short Line and the Soo

Winter ice shut Montreal. An Atlantic port that stayed open meant Saint John, New Brunswick, and a line across Maine. The Atlantic & North-West charter and the International Railway of Maine did that work. The first train from Montreal to Saint John ran on June 3, 1889. The South Eastern Railway, added in 1883, reached Newport, Vermont, and New England connections toward Boston. The Alouette later used that door. CP never blanketed the Maritimes the way Canadian National did; it did reach New Brunswick and, from January 3, 1912, Nova Scotia through the Dominion Atlantic.

West of Lake Superior the American door was Sault Ste. Marie. CP reached the Canadian Soo in 1888. In 1890 it took on the funded debt of the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie and the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic. The Soo gave Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, the Dakotas, and a line toward Winnipeg. The DSS&A was the Upper Peninsula, Marquette to Duluth/Superior. The Soo Line Railroad as a single U.S. company dates from January 1, 1961, when the MStP&SSM, the old Wisconsin Central (Soo-leased 1909), and the DSS&A were merged. That story stays on the Soo page. In 1987 Soo spun a package of original Wisconsin and Upper Peninsula lines as Wisconsin Central Ltd.; that later regional is Canadian National’s Wisconsin Central.

System map, 1938

Canadian Pacific Railway system map, 1938, sheet 1 of 4. Author’s collection.

Canadian Pacific Railway system map, 1938, sheet 2 of 4. Author’s collection.

Canadian Pacific Railway system map, 1938, sheet 3 of 4. Author’s collection.

Canadian Pacific Railway system map, 1938, sheet 4 of 4. Author’s collection.

Spiral Tunnels, Crowsnest, Connaught

By 1900 the map was mostly in. What remained was to make the mountain railroad carry twentieth-century trains. John Schwitzer, western lines engineer, replaced the Big Hill with two spiral tunnels. Heading west, Tunnel No. 1 is 3,255 feet; the line comes out turned north. After Yoho and the Kicking Horse River, Tunnel No. 2 is 2,921 feet, winding north, east, then south under itself. Ruling grade on the east slope fell to 2.2 percent. The new line opened September 1, 1909. Photographers have stood there ever since.

The Crowsnest Pass line, south of the original main, opened June 18, 1898. Ottawa helped pay for it. In exchange CP froze eastbound grain rates and westbound settlers’ effects at 1897 levels—the Crow Rate—a bargain that lasted, with wartime interruptions, until the Western Grain Transportation Act of 1983. The Lethbridge Viaduct over the Oldman River canyon opened November 3, 1909: 5,328 feet long, 314 feet high, then Canada’s highest railroad bridge.

Rogers Pass kept killing men in snow. The March 1910 avalanche took 62. The Connaught Tunnel, five miles under Mount Macdonald, opened in December 1916. It cut the summit 540 feet and more than 2,300 degrees of curvature. Seventy years later that was still not enough coal, sulphur, and potash. CP bored the Mount Macdonald Tunnel, 9.1 miles, the longest railway tunnel in the Americas. The first revenue train went through on December 12, 1988. Westbounds use Macdonald; eastbounds still use Connaught.

The Spokane International, Eastport, Idaho, to Spokane, came under CP in 1916 and was sold to Union Pacific in 1958. No separate page; it is a date on this railroad and on UP.

Spans the World

CP sold land at a few dollars an acre and a steamship ticket with it. Colonist cars hauled immigrant families from eastern docks to prairie sidings. Banff Springs (1888), Château Frontenac (1893), the Empress at Victoria, and Glacier House made the mountain railroad a tourist company. Canadian Pacific Steamships ran the Atlantic and the Pacific. Canadian Airways came in 1930; Canadian Pacific Air Lines in 1942. American railroads could not own that mix. Canadian law allowed it. The beaver on the shield is Donald Smith’s Hudson’s Bay Company animal. The later slogan was literal: trains, ships, hotels, an airline, a telegraph.

In the First World War the company put shops, ships, and hotels at the Empire’s disposal; 52 CP ships went into service and 27 came back. In the Second, Angus Shops in Montreal built Valentine tanks, and 22 ships went to war, 12 of them sunk. The 1939 royal tour westbound from Quebec to Vancouver was a CP train. The H1 4-6-4s that handled it became Royal Hudsons. That class table belongs on the steam roster.

Steam and diesel

CP built steam in its own shops for 61 years, 1883–1944, more than a thousand engines, Angus in Montreal the best known. Montreal Locomotive Works, Canadian Locomotive Company at Kingston, and a little Baldwin and Alco filled the rest. The late fleet is what the photographs remember: G3 Pacifics that could take a passenger train or a freight, P1 and P2 Mikados, T1 Selkirk 2-10-4s on the mountain grades—a wheel arrangement CP made its own—and the semi-streamlined H1 Hudsons. Last new steam was Selkirk 5935, MLW, 1949. G3 2389 at Portage la Prairie, and the post-1900 class tables, are CP steam.

Canadian Pacific 2-8-2 #5145 in service at Montreal during the 1950s. Built by CP shop forces in 1926. American-Rails.com collection.

Yard diesels appeared before the war; production road units in 1948, the same year the last steam was still on order. Builders were General Motors Diesel at London, Montreal Locomotive Works (Alco designs), Canadian Locomotive Company (Fairbanks-Morse), and a handful of EMD La Grange products—including three E8As, 1800–1802, oddities on a railroad that otherwise bought F-units and Geeps. First-generation paint was maroon and grey, then the 1968 Multimark. Regular steam ended with a farewell extra: 4-4-0 29, Montreal to St. Lin and back, November 6, 1960. E8A 1800 at Ottawa, C424 4201 at St. Luc, and the all-time diesel tables are CP diesel.

Canadian Pacific RS10 #8470 on a transfer run near the former Sunnyside Station, Toronto, Ontario, April 1970. Roger Puta photo.

Canadian Pacific FA-2 #4093 at Côte Saint-Luc Yard, Montreal, on March 22, 1970. Roger Puta photo.

Named trains

For decades CP was how most of Canada traveled between cities the highway had not yet reached. The stainless transcontinental Canadian, Montreal–Vancouver, entered service April 24, 1955—Budd cars, dome observations, FP7s and FP9s on the point. The Dominion was the secondary transcontinental until 1966. The Atlantic / Atlantic Limited used the Short Line to Saint John. The Alouette and Red Wing were the Boston–Montreal names with the Boston & Maine. Viger and Frontenac covered Montreal–Quebec. Rail diesel cars held Toronto–Buffalo, Montreal–Quebec, Montreal–Ottawa, Montreal–Mont-Laurier, and Sudbury–White River after the heavyweight locals came off.

Canadian Pacific FP7 #1424 with train 2, the "Canadian," entering Hull, Quebec, in September 1963. Rick Burn photo.

Canadian Pacific FP9 #1410 with train 1, the westbound "Canadian" (Montreal–Vancouver), at Dorval, Quebec, on September 6, 1965. Roger Puta photo.

A pair of Canadian Pacific FP7s, led by #1417, at Ottawa, Ontario, with train 1, the westbound "Canadian," on May 30, 1971. Roger Puta photo.

Canadian Pacific E8A #1802—one of three the road owned—leads train 41, the "Atlantic," with Easter holiday extras, approaching Windsor Station, Montreal, on April 20, 1973. Carl Sturner photo.

• The Canadian (Montreal–Vancouver), April 24, 1955–October 29, 1978 on CP
• Alouette / Red Wing (Boston–Montreal)
• Atlantic / Atlantic Limited (Montreal–Saint John)
• The Dominion (secondary transcontinental; last run 1966)
• The Viger and The Frontenac (Montreal–Quebec)

Trailer-on-flatcar began in 1952. Containers followed and are still the intermodal business. Passenger trains did not. CP applied to drop the Canadian in 1970 and spent the next eight years thinning it. On October 29, 1978, the remaining intercity trains went to VIA Rail, by then a separate Crown corporation. VIA later moved the Canadian off CP rails onto the CN main. The name survived. The CP route did not.

CP Rail, VIA, Calgary

A 1968 reorganization split the empire into subsidiaries. The railroad became CP Rail. The parent took the name Canadian Pacific Limited in 1971. The Multimark—the Pac-Man diamond—replaced the beaver on freight units through 1987. Hotels, ships, oil, timber, real estate, and telecommunications sat in Canadian Pacific Investments. The National Transportation Act of 1967 began to loosen abandonments. The 1987 National Transportation Act is the closer Canadian cousin of the American Staggers Rail Act. CP used both decades to shed prairie and secondary mileage. A November 10, 1979, hazardous-materials derailment at Mississauga, Ontario, emptied a city of some 200,000 people and left no fatalities. GO Transit’s Milton service on the Galt Subdivision is part of that aftermath.

In the 1990s the conglomerate came apart. PanCanadian, Fording, CP Ships, and the hotels were spun out. The railway name Canadian Pacific Railway returned in 1996. Headquarters left Windsor Station for Calgary. On October 1, 2001, the railroad became an independent public company, Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, listed in Toronto and New York. Hunter Harrison, late of Illinois Central and CN, became chief executive on June 29, 2012. Precision Scheduled Railroading, the operating ratio, and the fights that went with them are the 2010s. Keith Creel succeeded him in 2017. How that doctrine sits on the 2026 map is today.

Soo, Milwaukee, D&H, DM&E

The Soo remained a separate U.S. company long after 1890. It bought the Milwaukee Road’s Midwestern core on February 19, 1985, $570 million, after a bankruptcy court chose Soo over a higher Chicago & North Western bid. Milwaukee was merged into Soo on January 1, 1986. That company encyclopedia is the Milwaukee Road; the Pacific Extension embargo of 1980 is Lines West. CP looked at selling the Soo, then took full ownership in 1990. The Soo name remained on U.S. paper. It did not remain on the locomotives.

The Delaware & Hudson, bankrupt after Guilford, was purchased in January 1991. Sunbury to Rouses Point, and the idea of a Canada–U.S. trade bridge. Norfolk Southern took the south line, Schenectady to Sunbury, on September 18, 2015. What is left of the north end is CPKC. That railroad is the D&H page.

Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern and its Iowa, Chicago & Eastern sister closed to CP on October 30, 2008. Powder River coal had been DM&E’s reason for living. The extension was never built. The former Milwaukee lines across Iowa and the old C&NW Dakota stem came home to a Canadian owner that had once spun the Milwaukee pieces away. Those companies are DM&E and Iowa, Chicago & Eastern.

Central Maine & Quebec, the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic successor on the old Bangor & Aroostook and Canadian Atlantic map, closed on June 4, 2020. Saint John and northern Maine were a Short Line idea again. Lac-Mégantic is on the BAR page. The iron is CPKC.

April 14, 2023

On March 21, 2021, CP announced it would buy Kansas City Southern. Canadian National bid higher. The Surface Transportation Board rejected CN’s voting-trust structure on August 31, 2021. CP closed KCS into a voting trust on December 14, 2021. The Board approved the CP control case on March 15, 2023. The combination became Canadian Pacific Kansas City on April 14, 2023—the first single-line railroad from Canada through the United States into Mexico. KCS no longer exists as a separate Class I. That present-tense system is CPKC. The 2020s frame is the 2020s. Who the six Class I freights are is Class I railroads.

Canadian Pacific is the 1881 company, Smith’s spike at Craigellachie, Van Horne’s mountain railroad, the beaver shield, the maroon-and-grey diesels, the Canadian in stainless, a conglomerate that owned ships and an airline, a Calgary freight road, and the north half of CPKC. The name on the locomotives changed on April 14, 2023. The iron from Montreal to Vancouver did not.

Related reading on American-Rails.com

• CP steam roster · CP diesel roster · Canadian National · CPKC
• Soo Line · Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic · Milwaukee Road · Pacific Extension
• Delaware & Hudson · Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern · Iowa, Chicago & Eastern · Bangor & Aroostook
• Kansas City Southern · Grand Trunk Railway · Great Northern · Alouette · Class I railroads

Sources

• Murray, Tom. Canadian Pacific Railway. St. Paul: Voyageur Press, 2006. Corporate history, U.S. expansion, late steam and diesel
• Lamb, William Kaye. History of the Canadian Pacific Railway. New York: Macmillan, 1977. Construction; eastern expansion; Grand Trunk rivalry
• Berton, Pierre. The National Dream (1970) and The Last Spike (1971). 1871–85 political and construction narrative
• Canadian Encyclopedia, “Canadian Pacific Railway.” Charter February 16, 1881; last spike November 7, 1885; VIA October 29, 1978; 2001 independence
• Contract of 1880 / CPR Act: $25 million and 25 million acres. Railway Relief Bill, 1884
• 1938 Canadian Pacific system maps, author’s collection (sheets 1–4 on this page)
• Surface Transportation Board, CP–KCS, Finance Docket 36500. Voting trust December 14, 2021; approval March 15, 2023; CPKC April 14, 2023. CN voting trust rejected August 31, 2021
• Chicago Tribune, February 21, 1985; Milwaukee Road First Monday, March 4, 1985. Soo Line closed on Milwaukee Road February 19, 1985
• Canadian Pacific, Mount Macdonald Tunnel: first revenue train December 12, 1988, 9.1 miles
• American-Rails.com: Canadian National; CPKC; Soo Line; Milwaukee Road; Delaware & Hudson; Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern; Kansas City Southern; Class I railroads, as linked above

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38. Wisconsin Opens Comments on the 2027 Freight Plan

    Nov 05, 26 09:03 AM

    
    WisDOT opened the draft 2027 State Freight Plan for comment through December 1, 2026. The plan covers freight rail with highways, harbors, aviation, and intermodal links. Completion is expected in sum…

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39. U.S. Rail Traffic Rose 3.5 Percent in the Week Ending October 31

    Nov 05, 26 08:52 AM

    
    U.S. railroads moved 514,080 carloads and intermodal units in the week ending October 31, 2026, up 3.5 percent from a year earlier, the Association of American Railroads said on November 4.

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40. Muni and Bay Area Transit Measures Pass

    Nov 05, 26 08:49 AM

    
    San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said on November 4, 2026 that Proposition H and a regional transit measure passed. Proposition H is about 160 million dollars a year for Muni. The regiona…

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41. Ground Rules Set for Responsive Applications

    Nov 05, 26 08:47 AM

    
    Decision No. 46, served November 4, 2026, denies a request to add Walsenburg to the Union Pacific interchange list and sets what CPKC and CN must include in responsive applications. Four CPKC proposal…

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42. Video of the Vena Address Must Be Released

    Nov 05, 26 08:42 AM

    
    The Surface Transportation Board on November 4, 2026 denied the Union Pacific appeal and ordered the March 17 shipper-conference recording released to the parties by 5:00 p.m. Eastern on November 5. C…

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43. Chicago & North Western Iron Ore C628s

    Nov 04, 26 11:47 PM

    
    Chicago and North Western C628s 6701-6730, the ex-Norfolk and Western high-hoods, in Upper Peninsula iron-ore service from the mid-1970s until December 21, 1986, and what happened to each unit.

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44. Warrenton Railroad: Serving Warrenton, NC (1884-1985)

    Nov 04, 26 10:33 PM

    
    The three-mile Warrenton Railroad, from Warren Plains to the North Carolina county seat. Chartered January 28, 1871. First train November 8, 1884. Closed in 1985.

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45. Rio Grande Steam Locomotives (Since 1900)

    Nov 04, 26 11:40 AM

    
    Denver & Rio Grande Western steam locomotives built since 1900. Standard gauge quantity 435 and narrow gauge 48. Challengers, 2-8-8-2s, Mountains, Northerns, and the K-27, K-28, K-36, and K-37.

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46. Rio Grande Diesel Locomotives (All-Time)

    Nov 04, 26 11:39 AM

    
    Denver & Rio Grande Western diesel locomotives, each frame once. 554 units, from the 1941 NW2 through the 1990 GP60s. FT, F3, F7, and F9 sets are not counted again under their 1950 numbers.

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47. Rio Grande Railroad: Map, Logo, History, Rosters

    Nov 04, 26 11:34 AM

    
    Denver & Rio Grande Western history, from William Jackson Palmer and the October 27, 1870 charter through the Royal Gorge, the Moffat route, the California Zephyr, and Union Pacific common control…

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48. Lindblom Gift Expands the Fort Wayne Restoration Shop

    Nov 04, 26 11:14 AM

    
    Art Lindblom gave the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society more than $1.4 million, its largest single gift, to expand the New Haven shop. The addition is planned for late 2026 and early 2027. A sepa…

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49. Design Contract Awarded for the Forest Park Branch

    Nov 04, 26 11:09 AM

    
    The Chicago Transit Board approved a design contract for about 13 miles of Blue Line track from the Illinois Medical District to the I-290 Bridge. The release summary calls it a $17 million contract…

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50. Kanawha River Railroad: The Norfolk Southern Lease Is Renewed

    Nov 04, 26 10:51 AM

    
    Kanawha River Railroad filed to keep leasing 309.45 miles from Norfolk Southern in West Virginia and Ohio. The second amendment is dated August 17, 2026. The Board has not set the date the exemption t…

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