Summer Update

My Summer was extremely busy with staffing at camps, visiting with family, trips, working, sports, and barely squeezing in railroading. One of the big highlights of my Summer was a cruise to Alaska with family. We did and saw many spectacular things. Of all the amazing things we did though, the best was a chance to ride the White Pass RR.

                                                                               

Another neat railroading experience was seeing 2.5' gauge mining railway in the mountains behind Juneau. This railroad, now abandoned, was a large gold mining operation that pulled ore out of the mountain to a large mill at the Juneau wharf. It traversed more than 100 miles of tunnels (more miles of tunnels than roads in Juneau) inside of "Gold Mountain." This railroad was built in the early 1900's and closed in the 50's. In the 50's, it owned 14 GE mining locos that hauled 3 trains of 40 ore cars plus 2 20 car crew trains. The area we(my dad and I) visited was a little development where the tracks were exposed. There was a little town here with locomotive shops, mess hall, bunk houses, blacksmith, car repair shop, generator building, and a substation for the electric locos. Here the railroad had a 4 track yard where trains were staged and classified. The interesting part about this place was that the whole development was on an extremely steep mountain sides. In this case, most of all the structures were on stilts! This area is about a half mile long and is ended by a tunnel on each end. Everything here is just as they left it in the 50's when the business closed. This place is very easy to access with bikes(if you are interested in having a little more of an adventure, this place is littered with awesome mountain bike trails that go through some extremely historical places and of coarse, spectacular scenery). By the way, this would make a very interesting On30 layout.

Another neat thing we did was a trip to Barstow, CA(for some reason it is always really hot there? :) ). There is a huge classification yard there with tons of activity. Thankfully there is a lot of great railfanning places that are out of reach of the security. To go to Barstow though, you have to travel through Cajon Pass. This place is littered with famous railfanning places and tons of history. This is also an extremely active area. About one train every 15 minutes, growls or whines through the rugged scenery. A favorite place of ours is Morman Rocks, an area where large rocks tower above the UP and BNSF mainlines. From the top of these, great photos can be taken.