Canadian Pacific Railway Employee
Communications
Room 500 401-9th Ave S.W. Calgary AB T2P 4Z4
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VOLUME THIRTY-ONE
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NUMBER THREE 2001
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Engineering Genius
Remembered
Break Through: Former CPR
president Russ Allison, left, joins John
Fox to push the plunger on the last dynamite charge, opening the
tunnel bores between East and West.
John Fox,
retired vice-president, engineering, special projects, died 13 April 2001.
John will forever be remembered as the man behind the successful completion of CPR's mammoth $500 million Rogers
Pass Project, completed in May 1989. More than 1,000 workers were involved in reducing the grade through the 35
kilometer mountain pass from 2.2 percent to one percent, laying double track, and boring two tunnels, one of
which, the 14 kilometer MacDonald Tunnel, is the longest railway tunnel in North America and among the longest in
the world.
He was subsquently awarded the Society of Enginer's Churchill Medal for his work on the project which involved a
wide variety of traditional enginering skills, combined with the most up-to-date computer aided
technologies. Facts and statistics cited by the society in awarding the medal were the excavation of 1.4 million
cubic yards of earth, 570,000 cubic yards of rock, and the building of 26,000 meters of retaining walls.
Other well-known recipients of the medal and their fields are: Sir Christopher Hinton, atomic
energy, in 1956; Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, aircraft, in 1962; and Professor W.A. Gambling, fiber optic
technology, in 1984.
Tribute: One portion of the John Fox Viaduct in Rogers
Pass.
Among the impressive features of the project is a 1,280 meter viaduct. It was officially
named the John Fox Viaduct after completion of the Rogers Pass Project and is a lasting tribute to John's
contribution to CPR and engineering history.
"We knew we were taking on something monumental - something that would push the envelope of civil and
railway engineering", he said at the time.
"I'm particularly proud that Parks Canada has said our project sets environmental standards by which all
other projects will be judged".
John became a member of the Order of Canada in 1991 and was awarded the Julian C. Smith Medal by the Engineering
Institute of Canada in 1989 for his work on the Rogers Pass Project.
This CP Rail News article is
copyright 2001 by the Canadian Pacific Railway and is reprinted here with their
permission. All photographs, logos, and trademarks are the property of the Canadian Pacific Railway
Company.
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