There anybody have a update about CN 6015 a 4-8-2 Mountain on display in Jasper Station since the town was hit by a wildfire last night????

Sigh.
Jasper sits in a valley surrounded by mountains of dead trees killed by the mountain beetle. When I visited in 2018 I was fearful of what would happen when, not if the forest caught fire. In addition to the locomotive, Jasper is home to the Jasper Park Lodge, a former Canadian National hotel.
~Wesley

I’ve heard the lodge and depot have both burned. Not 100% confirmed but seems likely to be true. Very sad for all involved.

I’ve visited a couple times during layovers when riding the Canadian - as recent as last summer. A really charming town.

That not look good i see somes pictures of the town the wildfire burned Jasper very fast and hard

Depot may be safe - of course there was still lots of damage in the town but apparently VIA Rail said the depot and platform are safe.

Rocky Mountaineer has canceled trains to Jasper for the foreseeable future.

As of this writing (evening of July 25) there is a lot of misinformation and conflicting reports floating around, and only limited photos and video footage have made it out of the townsite.

It rained heavily last night and into today from Jasper to Edmonton, but before that we got about a week of extremely hot and dry weather, I'm talking daytime highs of between 30 and 35 C (for you Americans human body temperature is about 37 C) and windy, by western Canadian standards it was quite the heat wave and it left the forests tinder dry.

All this happened very rapidly, two separate wildfires started on July 22, one near the garbage transfer site and Trans Mountain pipeline pumping station (a few miles northeast of Jasper along the railway and Highway 16) and the other farther to the south near Athabasca Falls. These fires impacted two of the three roads leading out of town so the decision was made to evacuate that night. Pretty much the entire summer population of a busy tourist town left on the same two-lane highway overnight. Yesterday (July 24) conditions worsened significantly, rapidly driving the south fire toward the town and whipping it into a firestorm, one firefighter described flames hundreds of feet tall and it eventually generated its own pyrocumulonimbus thunderstorm. Things got bad enough that firefighters were forced to pull back and at the worst point last night only those with breathing apparatuses remained in the townsite. The latest updates from the Province and Parks Canada are that 30 to 50% of the town's structures are damaged in some fashion, with the vast majority of destruction being to the west of Miette Avenue. The Cabin Creek area now resembles the destruction of Lytton, British Columbia a few years ago, with whole blocks of houses burned to the ground.

At work people are saying that the 1990s-vintage CN bunkhouse and yard office on the south side of the tracks also did not make it, but I've yet to see photos and have heard conflicting reports about the fate of the historic 1920s passenger station on the north side of the yard, which is right by the intersection of Miette Ave and Connaught Drive. (EDIT: the old station and steam engine have survived, see my next post) CN 6015 is displayed outdoors immediately west of the station, and since a steam locomotive is mostly steel I would suspect it has survived in half decent condition. Probably no worse than what happened to Reading 2101, and that engine survived to become a static display.

Fairmont Hotels just announced that the majority of the Jasper Park Lodge has survived, including the main building. Their grounds, golf course and smaller structures have taken heavy damage.

Jasper is a home terminal for CN train crews, operations have pretty much ground to a standstill since the evacuation and many employees are now without homes and/or vehicles. Some crews who were stuck in Blue River, BC ended up being brought to Hinton, AB (the next town east of Jasper) by charter bus via Prince George, Chetwynd and Grande Prairie, a 15 hour 'deadhead'.

Calm, rain and cooler temperatures are continuing across western Alberta into this evening and firefighters are still working hard to put out the smaller remaining fires within the Jasper townsite. There has also been damage to both bridges across the Athabasca River, and this may mean that the Jasper Park Lodge, Lake Annette/Lake Edith and Maligne Valley areas are cut off until at least one of the bridges is repaired. To my knowledge there is not yet a timeline for allowing residents to return or for CN to resume train operations, and last night they started to divert some trains toward the CPKC mainline.

I've worked out of Jasper in the past and for a while I lived in one of the buildings that is now presumed destroyed. I ended up moving on and so have not lost anything to this fire, but many of my old friends and co-workers have lost everything that didn't fit in their suitcase or car. The only silver lining is that no human lives are known to have been lost to this fire so far.

EDIT: VIA Rail has stated that the historic Jasper station and its platform appear to have survived.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton ... -1.7275860

CN 6015 also appears intact, the pigeons roosting on her still have a home. This photo was posted by Richard Ainsworth in the RailsAB Facebook group.

I'm reading the lodge is intact for the most part. As for the station I've read conflicting reports. Some say it is still there. Some say it's gone.

At least one lodge, called Maligne Lodge, was lost: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton ... -1.7273606

The fire will impact the Rocky Mountaineer scenic train: "Because Rocky Mountaineer excursions rely on hotels and restaurants to house passengers before and after their daytime trips, there is no way any of the trains can operate into or out of Jasper if those facilities aren’t available." https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... le-future/

The now destroyed Maligne Lodge was a two storey motel on the west end of Connaught Drive, this is where the fire entered the town so it would have been one of the first large structures to go up. It is not to be confused with the Jasper Park Lodge, which is across the river and completely separate from the townsite.

Most hotels are on the east end or downtown, and while there are some losses between Miette and Hazel Avenues (west side of downtown) these areas appear to have survived better. The brunt of the damage is on the west end, which is (was?) mainly residential housing. The rumour about the CN bunkhouse also turned out to be false, it has survived with minimal damage. At work people are now joking about how the tough old crew van and yard engine (C40-8 2100) stood guard and chased the fire away from our buildings.

Freight trains are starting to run again today, with crews changing at Hinton instead of Jasper. Presumably they are also only using those employees who already lived in the Hinton area and so have not lost anything to this fire.

Thanks for the update SD70Dude...what a terrible tragedy. I'm just sickened by the images I'm seeing on social media, my heart goes out to those folks in Jasper.

73
RwC