The Battle For Winter

Here's something from long ago on a special day when I rode the snow fleet up to Tunnel deep in the wilds of the Chugach Mountains. This is what I wrote when I first shared this long ago.

The snow fleet has been climbing the steady 2% plus grade up from Spencer and is curling around by the site of the former Tunnel section house at MP 51. While no longer the home to a regular section crew, Tunnel is still a base for Maintenance of Way (MoW) crews to begin their assault on the treacherous avalanche zones in the loop district up to Grandview. Jordan Spreader #7 is in the lead with two geeps and a depressed center flat car trailing. Note the warning sign for Slide Zone 51 which the train is just exiting and the block sign for Tunnel Siding which is completely buried under chest deep snow.

The work train crew is heading south up hill toward the site of the massive slide near MP49 in the famous loop district that buried a northbound freight out of Seward nearly a week prior. The excavator with the custom designed snow bucket is on its way to continue the arduous task of extracting flat cars from a tomb of snow.

Here's a news story from back then.

And scroll down thru this page to 4/10/09 for some crazy photos.

Tunnel Station Chugach National Forest, Alaska
Wednesday April 1, 2009

WASILLA, ALASKA: WHERE THAT LONESOME WHISTLE BLOWS

“YAY!!! YAY!!! YAAAAAAAYYYYYY....”

Wasilla’s old Alaska Railroad Depot is once again a real, genuine, depot. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

More than three years have passed since the historic depot built in 1917 was moved from its former location at the train station on the corner of the Parks Highway and Knik Goose Bay Road to the middle of an abandoned gravel pit across the highway from Wasilla Lake. While the employees of the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce, the building’s long-time tenants, would come out onto the porch to wave at passengers in passing trains, up until two days ago it looked to me like the old depot would never serve a train again.

Then various Facebook friends me sent the Chamber’s announcement that a ribbon cutting ceremony was scheduled at the new Depot site on Saturday when the northbound once-a-month Hurricane Turn would be due at 9:50 AM.
From Saturday forward, the depot will serve all passenger trains that stop in Wasilla.
I had hoped to document the event from the air with Quixote the DJI Air 3 drone, but it took place in near blizzard conditions. I had to bag that idea.

I did come back under clear sky when the southbound Hurricane Turn Train stopped to drop off a few passengers right on time at 6:25 PM. They’ll be hard to pick out on a small screen but if you zoom in on the left edge of the frame you should see them.

Frame four shows Wasilla Mayor Glenda Ledford (middle, holding the big scissors), Mat-Su Borough Mayor Edna Devries (to Ledford’s right), and Representative Kathy Tilton shouting for joy immediately after they cut the ribbon.

This Ain't Right!

Do you know what's wrong with this picture? This is another oldie that I didn't remember taking till I was going thru old albums looking for something different to post. For a moment I thought this was a northbound empty 182N coal train until I looked at the date and then noticed the hoppers were loaded. The last coal train ever had rolled south just about three months prior as seen here.

This train is actually a 110N Seward Freight with LOADED coal hoppers. The train was loaded with leftover coal from the stockpile that Usibelli was shipping all the way back north to burn in one of the interior power plants after being unable to solicit anymore spot market business and realizing that the export coal trade was done for. While certainly disappointing it makes for a unique and interesting photo as three blue and gold SD70MACs lead the train over the silty turquoise water of the Trail River that connects Upper and Lower Trail Lakes. They are at MP 25.7 on the ARR mainline as they roll over the 360 foot long timber trestle and ahead of them is the 2% climb nearly 600 foot to the crest of the Kenai Mountains at Grandview Summit, right at MP 45.

Crown Point, Alaska
Wednesday October 19, 2016

As our extreme cold couple of weeks come to end we look back at the first bitter couple days of winter.
Thursday, 14 December 2023: Here we see Alaska Railroad Corporation (ARRC) Fairbanks Yard Job plowing railroad North towards Eielson AFB with 30 cars of black diamonds in tow. Here they are at MP-G23.21 as the matching pair GP's put on their best Alco Impression for the trip North. Leading the train is GP40-2 number 3015 followed by GP38-2 2006 both of witch put on quite the show on due to temperatures hovering around -30 on this blustery cold Alaskan Day. The crew has just one and a quarter miles left before they enter Eielson Air Force Base and the United States Military Railroad trackage at G24.5. While there they will wait to be let on base before making the final 3.5 mile trip to the USMRR's small yard before grabbing the empties reversing back South to Fairbanks.

Alaska Railroad Corporation, Fairbanks Yard Job
Unincorporated Community of Moose Creek
Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska

WASILLA, ALASKA: WHERE THAT LONESOME WHISTLE BLOWS

A red light stopped me this morning at the corner of Parks Highway and Lucille Street. The tracks of the Alaska Railroad paralleled the highway directly across the spot from where I sat. I had different “Lonesome Whistle” train picture possibilities in mind, both to the west and east.

The traffic light turned green. I turned right, to the east. Seconds later, I got a good view of a stretch of frozen-over Lake Lucille. I could see three ice fishing tents, too far out. If I drove out onto the ice and framed one or more tents with the railroad tracks in the background, a passing train would look like nothing more than an almost invisible thread.

I made a “U” turn and drove east to check the signal light at Dog Wash Crossing to see if it had already turned green for northbound traffic. It hadn’t. I was surprised to find it green for southbound traffic, red for north. This meant the southbound freight was late but it would reach the light before the northbound AuRoRa Winter Train did. This would make the AuRoRa about an hour late itself. I decided to park where I had a good view of the light and wait for the freight.

I readied Quixote the double-eyed drone to fly and listened for the whistle of the southbound freight. I formed a mental image of the photo I wanted to take. I did not want to waste battery power. I planned to launch Quixote the moment I heard the whistle and fly him to a certain spot where I could get a photo of the entire length of the freight curving backward into the heart of downtown Wasilla.

I never heard the whistle. The first notice of the freight’s approach came when I saw the crossing arms begin to lift to let the freight come through. I flew Quixote straight to this spot and had to shoot right here. I shot some more afterward, of course, but none were what I wanted. I brought Quixote back to the car and headed west to look for the right place to photograph the southbound AuRoRa. I will post the resultant photo tomorrow morning.

A look back to about a month ago before our bitter cold moved in, I decided to try my luck at some night time shooting. Monday, 15 January 2024: Alaska Railroad Corporation (ARRC) Fairbanks Yard Job has just tied on to a string of loaded tanks and one buffer car as they prepare to switch out the Marathon North Pole Terminal. Here they are at MP-G16.6 on the Eielson branch which runs from Fairbanks Yard (MPG-0) to the end of the railroad at Eielson's AFB (MPG-24.5). A string of empty coal cars from Eielson can be see on the siding behind the locomotives that the crew will take back to Fairbanks later in the evening. In addition they will bring a string of empty tanks that they will soon collect from inside the terminal after spotting their loads. In charge of todays yard job is GP40-2's 3008 and 3012 both of which were built new for the railroad in mid to late 1970's.

Alaska Railroad Corporation, Fairbanks Yard Job
North Pole, Alaska

Floating Freight Car Friday

In a prior post in this series I shared a photo of the Whittier Provider being pulled off the slip to begin its trip north to Whittier. Here is their sister vessel, the Fairbanks Provider, which had been holding out in Elliot Bay awaiting her turn to be brought into position to have the railcars stripped off her deck.

Three barges owned and operated by Alaska Marine Lines (a member of the Lynden family of companies) are constantly cycling between Seattle and Whittier, AK carrying up to 40 railcars on 8 tracks with 32 rows of containers stacked two or three high in the racks above. The rails are flush with the deck so that high reach fork lifts equipped with twist locks can drive on and off the barge before rail cars are loaded to pick or stack the containers. To add to the fascination AML owns flat decks they they lash anything and everything to and then stack on top of the containers. I've seen graders, excavators, campers, fire trucks, boats, and even prefabricated outhouses! Oh, and if that wasn't enough the upper level is also wired for 480V power so refrigerated containers can be plugged in to be kept cool in summer and warm in the sub zero winter months. There truly is nothing else like it!

This particular barge is the Fairbanks Provider built by Gunderson in 2001, and it is 420 ft long and 100 ft wide with 3190 linear feet of track on the deck and a dead weight of 15,300 tons! Movement of the barges is contracted to Western Towboat and out of sight but ready to move her into position is harbor tug, Westrac. The 63.4 ft long vessel was built in house by Western Towboat in 1987 and is powered by two, Caterpillar 3512 diesel engines for a total rated 2,500 horsepower.

Unlike in Whittier the containers are not handled in the same location as the railcars so a barge arriving from Alaska will stop here first to unload railcars then be moved to AML's yard down on the Duwamish waterway to be unloaded and reloaded. Northbound the process will reverse and the barge will stop here to load railcars before beginning their thousand mile 7 day trip up the Inside Passage and across the Gulf of Alaska.

In the background rises the lovely neighborhood of Queen Anne Hill.

Seattle, Washington
Wednesday October 30, 2013

WASILLA, ALASKA: WHERE THAT LONESOME WHISTLE BLOWS

This is not the shot of Easter evenings ARR AuRoRa Winter Train I intended to take. That shot fell apart and disappeared even as the sound of the whistle reached my ears. I had to act fast and make a dramatic change in the drone's location by hundreds of yards and then reframe a new photo in seconds. Now what I have is a shot that illustrates where and how the signal light I always check to see if the train is one it's on its way. The green light standing by Dog Wash Crossing reassures the engineer that the path before him/her is clear. It usually comes on a good half hour before the train arrives but sometimes an hour, sometimes two, and sometimes minutes. 4/1/24

Monday, 08 April 2024: Alaska Railroad Corporation (ARRC) Fairbanks Yard Job heads Railroad South over the Spur Court crossing and past K&K Recycling on a beautiful spring day. This is MP-G10.05 on the ARRC’s Eielson Branch that runs 28 miles between Fairbanks Yard and Eielson AFB Alaska. This days consist had GP38-2’s 2004 and 2007 along with the railroads Track Geometry Car on the head pin and 23 empties from Eielson’s Central Heat and Power Plant on the rear. Although the snow had just finally started to melt the summer is already shaping up to be very busy on the branch. The northern 20 miles have seen an abundance of ties marked for replacement along with track work equipment already being staged along the branch.

Alaska Railroad Corporation, Fairbanks Yard Job
Unincorporated Community of Badger
Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska