The average human life spends most of its time moving things from point A to point B.  You move your body from home to work.  This enables you to move money from your company's bank account to your own thus enabling you to move a Toshiba 57 inch widescreen TV from the department store to your living room.  If lifting a 600 pound TV is not your thing then you must move beer from the local store to the hands of your friends who eventually transport the beer to the rest room.  As Archie Bunker once said, "You cannot buy beer, you can only rent it."

Anyway, what makes moving things interesting to the average railfan is when the freight is strange or unusual.  Here you will find a collection of a few interesting things the Alaska Railroad has moved over the years.

So I asked a few Alaska Railroad employees what was the strangest or most unusual item they have seen moved:

"MOW once drove a concrete mixer truck onto a flatcar in Healy and hauled to away to some inaccessible spot, I watched as the train went by the Denali Depot, while the barrel was turning away mixing concrete for some project along the line."

"The most impressive was probably the prestressed concrete bridge beams for a Fairbanks highway project. These beams spanned three cars.   One end sat on a pivotal bolster on one of the end cars, the other end sat on a pivoting and sliding bolster on the other end car.  The middle car was an idler with no load.  Making it even more unusual was the fact that these "T" shaped beams were loaded in pairs, one enough above the other so that they could nest.  This loading was used to reduce the cost. (See photo #13 above)"