When the Canadian Pacific Railway was built in the early 1880s to connect the thriving cities of eastern Canada with the fledgling communities on the West Coast of British Columbia, it stretched across more than two thousand miles of rugged, nearly uninhabited wilderness with no blanket authority or viable system of law enforcement.

Over the years, the responsibility for the security of people and goods on the "World's Greatest Transportation System" would fall to the Canadian Pacific itself, and the private police force that grew up with the company. From ad-hoc groups of semi-autonomous armed watchmen and strikebreaking thugs organized at the local level, to the fully-professional force created in 1913 by the CPR president, the stage was set for more than a century of Canadian Pacific Police Service. The quiet efficiency with which its officers have conducted themselves in their ongoing battles with fraud, theft, smuggling, bombings, murder, mayhem, and the degree to which they have managed to avoid controversy and public scrutiny speak well for the men and women on the "Railway Beat".

David Laurence Jones is the former manager of internal communications at Canadian Pacific Railway. A history graduate from Concordia University, he worked for fourteen years in the railway's corporate archives, researching and collecting stories and anecdotes about the CPR's rich heritage. He continues to explore the history of "The World's Greatest Transportation System", volunteers with the Glenbow Museum, and is a member of the National Dream Legacy Society. His other books with Fifth House are "Tales of the CPR", "See This World Before the Next", "Cruising with CPR Steamships in the Twenties and Thirties", and "Famous Name Trains:  Travelling in Style with the CPR". He lives in Calgary with his wife and daughter.