BY STEVE BARRY/PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR
OU’RE HEADING TO THE CENTRAL part of Alaska — the land of the Alaska Railroad from Seward to Fairbanks via Anchorage — and you’re looking for steam locomotives. A quick look at your handy wall map shows Alaska is not big, tucked away in the lower left corner off the California coast near Hawaii; it can’t be any wider than Nebraska. Thus, a quick scoot over to the narrow gauge White Pass & Yukon in Skagway would be high on the list. But when you start to do the actual re- search, you quickly discover that Alas- ka is much bigger than it looks on that wall map; cut Alaska in half and Texas becomes the third largest state. The WP&Y is an 800 mile trip each direc- tion on two lane roads, with two inter- national border crossings. That’s a five day round trip from Anchorage for one day of railfanning.
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All is not lost, however. There are a few steam locomotives on display be- tween Anchorage and Fairbanks, and one (albeit small) is operating. And if all goes well, main line steam could re-
turn to Alaska as soon as 2015. Let’s take a ride along the Parks Highway, check out some scenery and visit the steam along the way.
Tanana Valley Railroad Museum Our tour begins in Fairbanks at Pio- neer Park. This park has an interesting story of its own, dating back to 1961 when the Pioneers of Alaska requested public land to establish Pioneer Memo- rial Park to showcase the history of Alaska. In 1965 the Alaska ‘67 commit- tee requested the park be used for the centennial celebration of the purchase of Alaska from Russia, which opened as the Alaska Centennial Exposition in 1967. In 1968 Pioneer Memorial Park was donated to the state of Alaska, which immediately donated it to the city of Fairbanks. On May 1, 1968, Fairbanks mayor Red Boucher re- named the park “Alaskaland.” Howev- er, since the park has no rides like most theme parks and the Alaskaland name conjured up something similar to Dis- neyland, the Pioneer Park name was
OPPOSITE TOP: Tanana Valley 0-4-0T No. 1 pauses for night photos at the Tanana Valley Rail- road Museum during the NRHS Convention on September 14, 2013. OPPOSITE: Pioneer Park in Fairbanks has some old mining equipment along the right of way. OPPOSITE RIGHT: No. 1 leads a train up a steep grade onto the fill over the main entrance to Pioneer Park.
58 OCTOBER 2013 •
RAILFAN.COM
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