Grand Forks British Columbia - We are at last heeding the dire ramifications of global warming and acting to mitigate them.
 
Now it's our turn.
 
It's about 30 years since the Canadian Pacific (CP) rail lines were torn up.
 
Isn't it time we give serious consideration to re-establishing a rail link between Grand Forks and Christina, to forming a Boundary Narrow Gauge Railway Society, to finding the wherewithal to get the job done and show the world that shorter distances between communities don't have to be by road?
 
One of the seminal books of the 1970s was "Small is Beautiful" by E.F. Schumacher (get it through the library), in which he extols the virtues of keeping things smaller and within parochial managerial range.
 
World trade, so contemptuously dominated by mega corporations, would be better served by small, local, enterprises.
 
Nelson owns and operates its own power generation, for example, and I believe we should seriously consider being in the vanguard of re-establishing a community owned and operated narrow-gauge railway system as a key element in our economic revival portfolio.
 
To our big advantage, the rail bed already exists, and I'm pretty sure that a small, solar-powered, engine hauling small, comfortable, rail cars parallel to the Trans-Canada Trail (TCT) would have much to proclaim.
 
It would make our stretch of the TCT uniquely attractive to both enhanced tourism and local transportation needs, goods and passengers.
 
You're invited to research worldwide narrow gauge railways.
 
Not the piddling miniature railways whose drivers straddle tiny engines as if riding a mule (some of those small units are actually called mules) but something from the middle range of rail locomotion between them, and what CP ran out of here until the late 1980s.
 
Given the popularity of many of those small railroads, it seems worthwhile putting out feelers to test our own readiness for such an effort.
 
It is not too far-fetched to consider asking CP, Burlington Northern, KVR, and other railways for help, they likely have much of what is needed to get such a project back on track, in a manner of speaking.
 
Kathleen Saylors.

OKthePK Joint Bar Editor:  Article abridged - non-railway data removed.