Alaskan Glory This shot is in the top five of all that I took in the decade I lived in the Last Frontier. I shared this long ago on RailPictures.net but it deserves to be here too. This is also special to me as it graced the cover of Railroads Illustrated 2017 Annual that featured a lengthy piece on snow fighting in Alaska that I penned. If interested I see that White River Productions still offers them for sale. Anyway, this is the caption I wrote at the time: It was a splendid cold Sunday with bluebird skies and crisp white snow abounding. An empty intermodal (bare table) train 110S was called for a date with the Northland Services barge at the Alaska Railroad's southernmost terminal in Seward. So, a quick call to my friend Frank Keller and we decided to go for it. What a chase...114 miles from Anchorage to the end of the line with not a cloud in sight. Two clean SD70MACs led the train which was unfortunately not very photogenic consisting of one tank car and 60 flats (most of which were empty) for a total of 2660 tons and 4852 feet. Here the train is seen plowing snow as it hustles south across the frozen waters of Trail Lake at MP 29.5. Until last summer this bridge was a 10 MPH bottleneck on the mainline to Seward. But with new steel bents and stringers courtesy of the Alaska Railroad's bridges and buildings (B&B) crew, trains now cruise at 25 MPH. Moose Pass, Alaska |
