As I said before, it was my intent to keep Othello to scale and as accurate as possible. This ought not to have been too hard – the original section house still exists, and the former railbed is now a road leading to the provincial park where the tunnels are. I figured setting things up would be as easy as using Google Earth.
However, I was utterly unaware of just how dramatically a place can change over time. In the 50+ years since the Coquihalla sub was abandoned, the Coquihalla river had changed course, flowing further south. Thus, when looking at the aerials, I was presented with a forest where river should be, and could not figure out where exactly the Othello facilities had been, briefly mistaking them for a part of the river further east that looked more like what I was seeing in the photos. It took quite a bit of consultation, and an aerial photo purchased later for Hope, to appreciate just how much things change on the ground in a few short decades.