BigSky56 wrote:the mystery is wheres the railroad that brought the engines and flat cars, are they narrow gauge or regular. danny
It was the first regular gauge railroad in Alaska. Alaska has some really cool and wild railroad history, and even today, there is some pretty cool stuff. The Alaska railroad is the last regular gauge railroad on which both freight and passenger trains use the same track. It also has the longest tunnel that is used by both trains and cars driving on the track.
I have always loved railroads. When I was three, I lived in a tent in Skagway. We lived on a hill and just behind the tent was a cut for the White Pass Yukon railroad. I used to sit on the edge of the cut above the railway everyday and wait for the train to pass under me. The engineers would lean out the window, wave up at me, and sound the whistle.
Also when I was three, I traveled out of Alaska to visit relatives back east. The first half of the trip was on railways. It must have been right at the end of any of those railways carrying passengers. We were several days on trains and then flew the rest of the way. I first tried a soft drink on the train (a 7-up) and since I did not have one again until I was seven, it was something that always seemed like a big deal to me.
The first dolly garden I caught was off of a railroad bridge, leaning against the rusty wheel of a flatcar.
Since then, I have worked several jobs directly with the Alaska railroad, blasting alongside of existing tracks, blasting for new rail beds, etc. I blasted granite in Curry for the railroad for ballast. Curry is now a ghost town, but was once the most popular destination in Alaska. It was a booming resort town at the midpoint of the Alaska Railroad, and even President Harding visited (it has been speculated that his death was triggered by a bad case of food poisoning contracted at the Curry Hotel). You can visit Curry by hopping on the Hurricane Train, which is the last whistle-stop train in the US.
We imploded the Moody tunnel, which was the last of the original tunnels still in use from when the railroad was built. I made the Discovery Channel on that one - my three seconds of fame. That was a fun job, but a sad one, too, to obliterate such history. Where the tunnel was, there is now a through-cut.