Myra Canyon British Columbia - A work crew should finish the first of 12 Myra Canyon trestles lost in the 2003 fire by Christmas.
 
The six bridge builders began constructing forms for the footings at the bottom of trestle number 18 a week ago.
 
For Ken Campbell, a leader in the campaign to rebuild the heritage structure, the sounds of banging hammers and heavy equipment are music to his ears.
 
"It's pretty exciting. There's been quite a bit of work done preparing to get to this point," Campbell said Wednesday.
 
"Once this one's done, we'll have learned quite a bit and be ready to go with the others as soon as we can next year."
 
The federal and provincial governments contributed $13.5 million toward rebuilding the historic trestles, which attracted 50,000 tourists a year before most of the trestles burned in the Okanagan Mountain fire.
 
The plan is to rebuild the 12 wooden structures and re-deck the two steel bridges by summer 2007.
 
Four of the original wooden trestles remain intact.
 
The budget for trestle 18, the one closest to Myra Forest Road, is $350,000.
 
Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) offered to design the mid-sized bridge, which will be 55 metres long and 10 metres high.
 
"We were under time pressure. They (CP) volunteered to do the design. For the rest of them, we'll hire engineers to do it," said Campbell.
 
The Myra Canyon project management committee will soon issue requests for tenders to design the other trestles.
 
Once the winning firm completes the design work over the winter, a call for tenders to build them will go out.
 
Construction should begin by May, said Campbell.
 
The goal is to rebuild five trestles in 2005.
 
The bridges will look like the originals, but without their load-bearing capacity.
 
They must support the weight of maintenance vehicles and snow, but fewer timbers are needed because locomotives no longer travel across the spans.
 
The old railbed snakes through sections of forest that were badly burned in the catastrophic fire, although they're greening up with grass and shrubs.
 
Other sections of the Myra Canyon are still heavily treed and pristine.
 
The Myra Canyon area remains closed while construction continues.
 
Author unknown.