WHITE PASS RR - CARCROSS, YUKON TO SKAGWAY, ALASKA

In 2007, our last summer living in Skagway, the White Pass & Yukon Railroad resumed service to the Yukon Territory for the first time since 1982.  Unfortunately, I was never able to ride on the RR for that last 27 miles along the shore of Lake Bennett.  Well, I had the opportunity yesterday, thanks in part to Lisa Hollander, who through a friend who works at White Pass, got me a ticket for the ride from Carcross back to Skagway.

Patty and Nancy shuttled me to Carcross, where I got on board at 11:30am, and rode most of the way on the back platform of the last passenger car in the train.  The weather was perfect, and it was a great train ride.  I'll let the pictures speak for themselves..................

The train ride includes a hot lunch at Bennett.

The lead engine is a 1953 GE, and the second engine is a 1960's ALCO.

The train depot at Lake Bennett was part of a gold rush town that included St. Andrews Presbyterian Church.  The church and depot are all that remains of the town that grew to approx. 20,000 during the winter of l897/98. 

The two trails (Chilkoot & White Pass) that served the gold rush before the completion of the RR, both ended here at Lake Bennett.  For 2 years, this is where all of the gold seekers had to build a boat, or something that would float, in order to continue an over 500 mile journey through the lakes, and down the Yukon  River to the goldfields near Dawson City.

 

This last photo is a little over half way, and this is as far as I got with the challenging task of finding a suitable place to get on the Internet.  The library sort of works if there's not a lot of people competing for limited band width.  These pictures are about half of what I wanted to load, but the process came to a grinding halt as lots of people started logging on.  Perhaps more pictures of the rail journey later today, when the ships have departed, and crew members have disappeared from the library.