First we start our little photo tour on the Alaska Railroad. Alaska is, hands down, the most beautiful place I have ever visited. If you have ever thought about going to Alaska, I seriously encourage you to take as much time off as you can get away with, and go! It is an incredible, beautiful, and unique place, and honestly, it's pretty tough to take a bad picture there!
The first picture, above, is from the Alaska Railroad's Coastal Classic train, operating in the summer, between Anchorage and Seward. Michael, my youngest brother, was visiting Alaska, and for a change of pace, I decided to take him to Seward on the train, rather than drive. In the morning, it was a cold, rainy trip south, but coming back, the clouds started to break, and we saw a little blue sky and sunlight. The photo above was taken on the northbound train, only about twenty minutes out of Seward, along Kenai Lake. This is a long skinny lake, up in a glacial valley, in the Kenai Mountains. The water is an icy 34 degrees, because it all comes from glaciers in the area. It is always a blue-green color, because of the glacial silt in the water. It is completely surrounded by dramatic mountains, which can be seen around the lake, reflected in the lake, and here, even reflected in the Pullman Standard coach that was carrying the markers on the train.
The next picture, above, is from the Alaska Railroad's Chugach Explorer train, which operates in the summer, between Anchorage, Whittier, and Spencer Glacier. The train leaves Anchorage in the morning, and heads south, to Portage, where it leaves the main line and goes down the Whittier line, to Whittier. After a brief stop in Whittier, it back tracks to Portage again, and then continues south on the main line to Spencer Glacier. Spencer Glacier has little more than a small wooden platform, so the train actually is taken to another storage track for the day, and makes the same trip in reverse in the afternoon, returning to Anchorage. In this picture, the train is on its way back to Anchorage, and is making the stop for Portage. Portage today is a ghost town, but many of the people who go to Spencer Glacier do not want to take the time to go to Whittier before returning to Anchorage, so the railroad arranges for a bus to pick them up in Portage and deliver them to the Anchorage depot. Once they disembark, the train goes to Whittier once more, and then heads back to Anchorage. In this photo, the train has just arrived in Portage, and the Conductors are preparing to help people off. The bilevel car, known as the Chugach Explorer, is the creation of the now defunct Colorado Railcar Company. It is self propelled, and contains a diesel engine under the floor. It does not have enough power to pull an entire train, but since there are no turning facilities on the route, it is often used as a cab control car, to operate an engine three of four cars away pushing the train. Occasionally, when only a few people are riding, it will operate by itself on this train.
The next picture comes from the Alaska Railroad's Denali Star train. This is a daily train, in the summer, between Anchorage and Fairbanks, a 12 hour trip. In the winter, another train, the Aurora, runs the route on a weekly basis. This train only makes a few stops between Anchorage and Fairbanks. It is the longest passenger train on the railroad, and often carries ten or more private cars, owned by various cruise companies, for their guests to travel to Talkeetna, Denali National Park, and Fairbanks. In the above photo, the train is travelling north, along the Susitna River, just south of the Talkeetna station. The locomotives are nearly twenty cars ahead of where I was standing to take the photo. The mountains in the background are part of the Alaska Range, which is one of the tallest mountain ranges in North America, with peaks well above 15,000 feet. The Alaska Range is home to Mount McKinley, or Denali as it is called more locally, which is the highest peak in North America, at 20,320 feet, and is just out of this photo, to the left.
A little further north, the photo above shows a meet, at the Summit siding. This is also on the Denali Star train. The photo was taken from the northbound train, which was holding the siding, as the southbound train pulls between switches on the main. Most of the Alaska Railroad is a single track main line, with no signals and hand lined switches. That is true here, at Summit siding. The Conductor had to step off the train and line us in to the siding, and then line the switch back behind us. The same process repeated itself when it was time to leave, and we exited the siding. Summit siding is near the highest point on the Alaska Railroad, in Broad Pass, about 200 miles north of Anchorage, and only about 50 miles from Denali National Park. The next stop for the northbound train was Denali, and the southbound train would next be stopping at Talkeetna.
One of the really nice features on some of the cars that operate on the Denali Star train is that they have open platforms. That made a few of these photos possible, including the one above. The photo above was taken from the rear platform on the last car on the Denali Star, as it traveled north. I do not remember the exact location that I took this picture, but it was somewhere near Honolulu siding. Yes, this is still Alaska. The train was not moving particularly fast, but the tracks moving beneath coupler and end plates on the car did make for a dramatic view.
Every evening, in the summer, the southbound Denali Star train ends its trip in downtown Anchorage. Because of the length of the train, it is actually split in two for disembarkation. The train stops under the bridge in the background, and all the private cars, owned by the cruise companies, are cut off and left standing there. Buses owned by the same companies pick up the passengers on those cars and deliver them to the local hotels. Once those cars are cut off, the Alaska Railroad cars are pulled to where you see them in this picture, directly behind the depot. Once everyone disembarks from both portions of the train, the train is put back together and the whole thing is moved to the yard for servicing. The next day, the train heads north, to Fairbanks. This picture was take at about 9:00pm, after most of the passengers had disembarked, just before the train was put back together. In the summer in Anchorage, the sun does not set until after midnight.
One year, while I was in Alaska, I had the opportunity to travel to Skagway, which is the home to the three foot gauge White Pass & Yukon Route, Alaska's only other railroad. The White Pass & Yukon Route is unique, because at this point it is a tourist railroad, however, it crosses into Canada, making it the world's only tourist railroad that crosses an international boundary. In fact, Skagway is the only station in the United States on this railroad! From Skagway, it climbs up the White Pass, which would be at the back of this picture, and at the top of the pass, only 15 miles away, it crosses into British Columbia. This railroad primarily operates in the summer, although there are some excursions in the winter months. The photo above is the shop facilities, located at the north end of Skagway. This shows some of the various, and quite unique, diesel locomotives that the railroad uses. Most of these engines have been running for over 50 years.
Skagway itself is located at the end of a valley, where the valley meets salt water. It is a port town, and during the Klondike Gold Rush, it was the gateway to the Yukon. The railroad was built as a result of that gold rush. Thousands of people came to Skagway on ships, and then walked over either the White Pass or the Chilkoot Pass, to get to the Yukon. Neither pass was an easy journey, and some enterprising business men determined to build a railroad to Dawson City, about 500 miles from Skagway. Dawson City was the center of the gold rush, and the railroad aimed to make money taking people over the pass quickly and safely. The gold rush was short lived, lasting only about a year, and consequently the railroad was never built to Dawson City. It went as far as Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon, although today service only regularly operates to Carcross, YT. Despite the end of the gold rush, the railroad actually was quite successful financially, being a major connection to the Yukon. At the time, there were no roads through Canada, to the Yukon, nor were there any from the main part of Alaska. The railroad was an important connection for people to get to a port, where they could sail to Seattle or Vancouver. It was also an important link for cargo to reach the Yukon. At one time, the White Pass & Yukon Route also operated a fleet of ships, and container terminals, essentially moving cargo from Seattle all the way to its destinations in the Yukon. Additionally, the railroad hauled lead ore out of the Yukon, loading it on ships in Skagway. As the highways were developed, although there are only a few, it was more efficient to haul cargo by truck, as the narrow gauge trains were quite limited in their capacity.
Recently, there has been a proposal to make the White Pass a dual gauge line. Standard gauge is to be used for freight trains. The line is to be extended to various lead mines in the Yukon, and standard gauge freight trains, with a much higher loading capacity, are to be used to haul the lead ore to Skagway, where the facilities still exist to load it onto ships and export it. The narrow gauge track is to remain in place for the tourist trains, and service may possibly be extended to Whitehorse again. Despite being a gold rush railroad, it is still doing quite well, over a century later. It should be interesting to see how this little tourist line develops into an important freight railroad in the future.
