Our Alaska adventure in June included a land portion featuring Denali National Park and an ocean cruise along the southeast coast of Alaska and into the Inland Passage. I covered the land portion with the trek on the Alaska Railroad from Denali Park to Anchorage in the previous post:
https://espeecascades.blogspot.com/2024/06/north-to-alaska.html
Our first port of call after embarkation at Whittier was at Skagway. Skagway developed as a port during the Yukon goldrush of 1898 as it provided the most direct access to the Yukon Territory via the White Pass. Gold-seekers built their required supplies for entry into Canada by serving as labor to build the White Pass and Yukon Railway. The WP&Y is a narrow gauge (3-foot gauge0 line that remains in service, now hauling tourists. The rail trip up into the pass and back was mandatory for me.
The WP&Y railway has been used for freight hauling, but the roadway into Skagway has provided an alternative for freight. Today the main business appears to be hauling tourists.
Our trip began from the Broadway dock spur, one of three serving the cruise ship port. The first few miles were relatively level, passing the official railway depot and then the Skagway shops where locomotives and cars are maintained. As we got further into the Skagway River canyon, the grade increased and the canyon walls closed in, well showing why a narrow-gauge railroad was a practical solution. A lot of dynamite was used over the course of the construction project.
Skagway shops. One of the original “shovel nose” GE diesel electrics 0f 1954-56 resides outside the east side of the shops.
The railway climbs nearly 2900 feet into the White Pass with grades reaching 3.9 percent. That gradient is double what the SP engineered for the Cascade Line that I model (1.8%). Add a modest traffic base (initially gold rush supplies, later mineral ores) to the terrain challenges and one sees why more expensive engineering was not used. Skagway to the White Pass summit is about twenty miles.
I was struck by the number of trains on the line to the pass. That should not be too surprising as we had four cruise ships in port, each with a couple thousand passengers. Each of those ships likely generated traffic for two or three trains in addition to other activities and transportation modes (bus and helicopter). Many times during the climb to the pass and return I could see other trins ahead or behind us. I did not confirm the control system used by the WP&Y, but I suspect a form of Centralized Traffic Control and powered track switches was used.
Our train climbing the canyon towards the White Pass. One can barely see the green and yellow locomotive through the trees.
A scenic highlight seen near the pass summit was a former bridge trestle that spanned a canyon spur. This trestle once featured in WP&Y publicity materials. The wood trestle approach failed under the weight of the then-new diesel locomotives, leading to new line that climbs a bit further into the canyon before crossing on a new bridge and then passes through a tunnel on the way to the summit.
Original bridge and trestle seen from the new line. The original wood trestle approach to the steel bridge on the right collapsed. Our train is descending from the summit and tunnel.
Summit loop. One option for WP&Y trains is to briefly enter the Yukon Territory of Canada and use a reverse loop to quickly return to the pass and descend back down to Skagway.
Returning to Skagway, I got better views of both our own train’s locomotive and other locos in service.
Lead locomotive for our train. This is one of the new, third-generation diesels on the WP&Y. It essentially is a narrow gauge, wide nose SD40-2. That wide nose reflects the “shovel nose” of the original GE locos acquired in the mid-1950s. Here, our loco, having brought our train down close to the Broadway Pier, is following our train back toward the shops. Our loco, WP&Y 3002, is one of two painted in the historic yellow and green paint scheme seen on the original GE locos.
Another of the third-generation leading a train from one of the other cruise piers. WP&Y 3006 has the new paint scheme.
The second generation of WP&Y diesels were built by Montreal Locomotive Works in the late 1960s. WP&Y 104 followed our train into town and will pull the train back to the shops for servicing. This bit of locomotive switching places a locomotive on the front of any movement in the very congested town area—congested with tourists. This is the generation of WP&Y diesel modeled by LGB for garden railroads.
The WP&Y rotary snow plow, a steam locomotive and a caboose now reside near the central part of Skagway. Tourists and tour buses were everywhere! Those tourists are the reason we still have the White Pass and Yukon Railway.
I enjoyed our trek to the White Pass and return to Skagway. The train ride amply demonstrated the difficulties faced during construction—lots of very hard granite and a steep canyon. That tough construction and operating environment justifies use of narrow-gauge railroad equipment. I was delighted to see examples of all three generations of WP&Y diesels.
This post marks "Milepost 300" on my railroad blogging adventure!
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