Othello Revisited.
Way back about 6 years ago when I first started modelling, I chose to begin at what is known as Othello. Othello was one of the ‘stations’ along the Kettle Valley Railway’s Coquihalla Subdivision. And the word ‘station’ really doesn’t apply well – there was no actual train station – just a tiny passenger shelter at one end and the section foreman’s house at the other, along with a crew bunkhouse.
Being new to the hobby and new to the KVR at the same time, I had to make do with the best info available. Using Joe Smuin’s excellent Mileboards book, I figured out the general lay of the land for Othello and set about to plotting where it was using Google Earth. At that time I hadn’t ‘invented’ my strategy of printing out aerials in N scale for overlays, so I relied on measurements and guesswork to lay it out on my foam base and get carving.
But there was one flaw.
As I’ve mentioned before, a lot changes over the course of 50 years. Especially with rivers. Rivers seem so permanent, don’t they? But they’re not. They are dynamic. Especially mountain rivers. They are always working like busy beavers, eating away at embankments and rock, cutting a path, ultimately, to the sea. And as they do their work, they change. They create and remove landforms at will. They change course a little. Or a lot.
In the case of Othello, it was the latter. When I first visited Othello in person in 2009, I was *lost*. The old photos showed an idyllic, wide, lazy emerald river lumbering alongside the tracks before making a bend south. The passenger shelter appeared to sit right on its banks. But when I went to Othello, I saw no river. Instead I saw forest. TONS of forest. The roadbed was still there of course (it is now Othello/Tunnels Rd. and leads to the provincial Quintette Tunnels parking lot). But the river? Couldn’t see it. And in fact, I came to doubt Mileboards and wondered if maybe the site was further east, because there was a site back there that looked pretty much identical in many respects to the one in the old photos.
In emails with Joe however, he patiently explained how much could change over a few decades. And now, 6 years later, I finally have my hands on a late 1940s aerial of the area via the National Air Photo Library offered by Natural Resources Canada. If you’re a modeller and haven’t used a resource like this, I highly recommend it. I would assume most countries have something similar. Since the invention of the airplane, governments have been surveying their territories from the air, and Othello was no different. Only from the air are we able to appreciate how dramatically Othello has changed.
The first thing that jumps out is the islands. What appears in the Google Earth photo (and on the ground) as a mostly solid mass of land and trees was once active riverbed, with a series of islands along the north side. In the older aerial, there’s even some bridges to a couple of them! Wow! That area is *unrecognizeable* now. The islands are now just part of the landscape. And the river is long gone to the south. And it appears to have taken that chunk of mountain jutting into it in the middle of the old photo completely out! I don’t know if maybe later highway building crews dug it out for fill or if the river was purposely rerouted for flood control, but the whole main body of the watercourse has shifted significantly south. Any wonder I couldn’t get my bearings! It’s clear the section house is, as Joe said, where it always was.. just a few feet further back on the property post-abandonment. And in fact, the shelter survives also, albeit as a funky bed and breakfast type deal at the Kwakwehala Resort. There’s some pics of it here, now billed as the ‘Othello Cottage’: http://www.eco-retreat.com/sleep.htm
The thing that I am confronted with now though is whether I’m prepared to live with my Othello scene as it is today, or take the benefit of this new information and bring it that much closer to its historical appearance. It is tempting. Although I’m proud of the scene as it is and loath to get into a redo, there is some appeal to the idea of taking everything I’ve learned in the 6 years since I first did it and reapplying it to today. I’d love to capture a few bits of those islands too if I can. Wow. But yes, Tip #1 to modellers: invest in the aerials. The aerials will tell all.