Revelstoke Station Memories Live On

In the summer of 1971, I worked at the Revelstoke RIP track, whose crews broke from repair tasks to service passenger trains coming into the station. At night, one of its voyeurs had a reputation for doing chin-ups on the high window sills under coach windows in hope of viewing bedroom passengers under an incompletely-pulled blind. But my friend Bob (son of Superintendent Fred Booth) had such a sight provided inadvertently one evening as his crew stood ready for the Canadian to brake.

Two naïve young women were undressing in their room when their train suddenly emerged from the wild Illecillewaet valley into town and all its light, with their blind still up. Exposed in their scanties before an appreciative male audience, they could be seen shrieking and leaping about, looking for any possible cover in their tiny space. Thick glass prevented audible contact, and they were having no success in finding the blind, so Bob gallantly motioned how to pull it down, but the girls mistook his aiding gesture to mean “show us more,” so it only intensified their embarrassment.

Although none of them met, those Revelstoke station memories live on for all parties.

Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day

— Folksong sung by Mary Hopkin, 1968