Side Trips

Along Highway 5 there are some interesting side trips you can take where you can explore the old Kettle Valley Railway Coquihalla subdivision.

Quintette Tunnels at Othello

Named from the characters of William Shakespeare, Andrew McCullough named the many stations and way points after them.

The Quintette Tunnels are a straight tangent crossing the Coquihalla River. There are many tunnels you can walk through. The grade is easy and excellent for bicycles and families with strollers.

Brookmere

Editor's Note: This is from the travels of John Van Buekenhout

We left Richmond on June 21, 2005 around 7:00 a.m. and headed for the Coquihalla Hwy. (BC 5). We exited the Coquihalla at Exit 256. The only way to exit is to turn right. There is a T in the road; turn right which will bring you on to a two (?) lane gravel road. In other words: turn right then turn right again. We stopped and asked directions from a Teresen Pipeline crewmember. He said that we were on the right road and that Brookmere was just 5 or 6 clicks down the road. It was a nice day and we drove along between 20 and 30 kilometers per hour. It was a circuitous road. We then came upon a paving crew laying pavement on the road. We subsequently learned that it was cheaper to add a little asphalt to scarified road material from the Coquihalla and lay it down on a local country road.

We came to Brookmere. After we had some lunch then a look around especially at the water tower. What seemed peculiar was that the railway artifacts except for the caboose we behind fences with NO TRESPASSING signs. We were just cleaning up from eating when a pickup came up.

The occupant of the pickup was a local who told us the following:

• If one called out the name Linda then at least four different people would respond.
• Only nine families live the settlement of Brookmere. There were 20 families who lived in the community during its heyday.
• The water tank seemed small but it was rated at 10,500 gallons. The tank could be filled in a matter of minutes as the water came from a creek located near the right-of-way. The settlement used the same water system as the railroad. When replacement was due, the BC Government wanted $175,000 to replace the water system however the local citizens held a work bee and the entire water system was replaced for about $5,000 per family.
• The tank was “two-sided” in that one side served the Kettle Valley Railroad and the other side served the Vancouver, Victoria & Eastern (VV&E), a Great Northern subsidiary. Brookmere was a terminus for the VV&E. Note that the tank is located on private land.
• There is a concrete pad that the water tower used to sit on. This pad is 27 feet across.
• A large tank served as a fuel storage tank for locomotives as coal had been outlawed as a fuel.
• Three Canadian Pacific houses have been “saved” and our now used as private residences. It is interesting to note that two streets are named Conductor and another Engineer to show the settlement’s heritage.

The settlement has several artifacts: the two-sided water tower, the fuel tank, a section house, a wood-sheathed caboose and the three Canadian Pacific houses. And, the right-of-way we walked on and drove on. When we left Brookmere we came to that ubiquitous T: one road went south to Coalmont and the other to Aspen Grove.