Story By NED ROZELL
Photos By KATE SALISBURY
8:32
a.m.: Pulled by a diesel engine with the strength of 3,000 horses,
a string of 13 rail cars lurches forward. The Alaska Railroad train rolls
toward Anchorage, tugging a luggage car, four Alaska Railroad passenger
cars, five McKinley Explorer Westours cars, and three glass-topped Princess
cars.
8:36 a.m.: Conductor Bill Haggart, 44, is responsible for this 100-ton, quarter-mile snake of steel and glass. From a room recently transformed from bathroom to office, ever-changing scenery scrolls by to his right.
With a hand-held Motorola, he radios the men driving the train, engineer Duane Kauke and fireman Steve Welsh. Kauke and Welsh sit in the lead engine, a black-and-yellow bulldog with "3008" painted on the side. "Three-thousand-eight, let's go to channel one. We'll get some trail."
When he gets "trail," Haggart will have permission from Alaska Railroad headquarters in Anchorage to use a stretch of track beyond the University Avenue road crossing. A dispatcher in Anchorage keeps track of where freight and passenger trains are. The Alaska Railroad is strictly a one-lane affair for most of the 470 miles between Fairbanks and Seward.
When trains meet, one has to pull over on a "siding," a mile-long section of track that parallels the main track about every 5 miles. Haggart expects to meet a freight train headed north sometime during the 12-hour trip from Fairbanks to Anchorage. The freight train left Anchorage at 3:20 a.m., and is now aimed toward the headlight of engine 3008. On the same track.
"We'll get out of the way," Haggart says. "I guarantee you I will chicken out."
A 23-year Alaska Railroad veteran, Haggart wears a vest, tie, dress shirt and jacket. His black felt conductor's hat, high and narrow like a policeman's headgear that isn't filled out, holds four pins. Each pin represents five years of employment with the Alaska Railroad. Haggart earned the pins with years of "yard work," in which he assembled loads of coal, liquid fuel, or whatever the train carried, lining up rail cars in order and hooking them up.
The preferred dress in Alaska rail yards isn't a white shirt.
"I've paid my dues for 20-odd years to hold one of these jobs," Haggart says. "It's the light at the end of the tunnel."
8:39 a.m.: Engine 3008 obtains authority to proceed beyond the University Avenue crossing. The train rumbles by. Saturday morning motorists watch with detached curiosity.
8:41 a.m.: The only other man on the train wearing a vest that has buttons stamped with "ARR," 41-year-old brakeman Warren Redfearn, pops his head into the office. He wears a hat similar to Haggart's, but it's loftier and it sports a pin that reads BRAKEMAN in silver letters.
8:50 a.m.: As the train passes Happy, near Ann's Greenhouses, Haggart explains the difference between conductor and brakeman. Both worked during the pipeline boom in the early '70's, performing similar duties. But Haggart has seniority.
"He does anything I don't feel like doing," Haggart says of the brakeman. "Historically, he was the guy who climbed out on the cars tying the hand brakes to slow the train down."
Today's train has disc and drum brakes, much like those on a car. Like some cars, the train's brakes produce the teeth-grinding squeal of metal on metal.
8:53 a.m.: Haggart rises. It's time to gather tickets from the Alaska Railroad customers seated in the first four cars. The Princess and Westours folks in the trailing eight cars of the train have paid for a package tour. The tour group companies pay a fee to the Alaska Railroad for the tow. "They're running there own show back there," Haggart says, "but when it comes to the safety of the passengers and the running of the train, they're all mine."
Haggart's glasses are tinted, giving him a bright amber view of the world. A Harley Davidson ring clings to a finger on his right hand. His oversized wallet is attached to his belt by a silver chain. It's not difficult to picture him off duty, cruising the highway on his Harley FLH, a motorcycle so train-like it tows a sidecar.
9:04 a.m.: Haggart slides open a door between cars. It takes an effort akin to arm wrestling a child. Between cars, he's hit by a splash of cool air, squeaks of rubber bumpers and the snare drum staccato of train on track. Once through another door, in the muffled warmth of a car, silence returns. "Tickets please." Haggart collects.
9:32 a.m.: Redfearn, the brakeman, says a line he'll repeat to several different people throughout the day. "I'm the best-dressed janitor you've ever seen," he says.
One of his duties is to pull a rubber glove over his left hand and clean the bathrooms, six of which meet the needs of up to 100 Alaska Railroad passengers. Stocky and square-shouldered in his black wool sportcoat, Redfearn says that his main responsibility is a bit more exciting.
"My job is getting the train out of the way of an opposing train." In the Lower 48, Redfearn explains, most major rail lines have a system of red and green lights to control traffic on the rails. Without electricity along much of the 470 miles of track, the Alaska Railroad prefers human eyesight to solar-powered relays.
9:40 a.m.: Redfearn sits down at a table in the Alaska Railroad dining car, perhaps the most pleasant car on the train. Each table is bedecked with a mixture of Alaska flowers and spruce cuttings in a plastic Alaska Railroad mug. Large windows topped with red taffetta bunting give airy views of the forest, still vibrant with the neon green of spring.
9:45
a.m.: As the train nears Nenana, Redfearn displays a large black photo
album containing the fruits of his off-duty hobby. The 1996 Alaska Railroad
passenger services brochure contains five of his photos. He shows his photos
to passengers who marvel at the close-up shots of brown bears, moose, a
lynx kitten. People linger on a Denali sunset. An orange sherbet sky.
9:55 a.m.: The train crawls over a bridge and into Nenana. Redfearn explains that Nenana, like Denali, Talkeetna and Wasilla, is a "flag stop." "If somebody's there, we'll stop," he says.
Nobody's in Nenana waiting for the train. It rolls past.
10 a.m.: Steve Welsh, the fireman, appears in the dining car carrying an empty Thermos. While waiting for breakfast to take back to the glassed-in front of engine 3008, he explains that he and engineer Duane Kauke share the driving duties.
"I keep track of him so he doesn't goof up; he does the same for me," Welsh says. Before the conversion of railroad engines to diesel, the fireman was the strong-backed gent who fed coal to the steam engine.
One of Welsh and Kauke's main duties is to control the speed of the train. The fastest we'll move today is 49 miles per hour. "We'd need automated signals if we went any faster, and for that you've gotta have electricity," Haggart adds. "You get out here in the middle of nowhere . . . we're never gonna see it."
The train creeps around sharp corners at 15 miles per hour. The men driving the train follow a list of speeds they can go depending on where the train is. From milepost 385 to milepost 382, for example, the train might be restricted to travel at 30 miles per hour. Today, Welsh and Kauke have 38 "slow orders," which detail areas in which they'll have to slow down more than usual because of repairs or permafrost-bumpy sections of track.
10:40 a.m.: The three-member dining car wait staff takes a half-hour break. Waiter Matt Kolesky, 21, isn't related to Matt Koleski of the Alaska Gold Kings hockey team, but he's met him. Kolesky is beginning his fifth summer of work as a waiter on wheels. He can pocket $100 in tips on good days, even after he shares his bounty with the cooks and the bus boy.
Rebecca Johnston is a waitress who spends winters snowboarding around Anchorage with the money she makes on the train. A redhead with serious brown eyes, the 23-year-old has worked on the train for four years.
10:55 a.m.: Plates bounce in a spring-loaded dispenser as two cooks prepare lunch in a narrow, frantic kitchen. The kitchen, a stainless steel shoe box, smells like coffee. A tape player is blasting saxophone. The song is by a band called Morphine.
John Cain, from Poulsbo, Wash., hustles to construct an omelet. He wears a blue bandanna over his hair. Asked if he's the chef, Cain shakes his head. "If I'm using powdered alfredo mix, I can't call myself a chef," he says.
The kitchen is dominated by the grill, hot enough to sizzle a finger. In the narrow space, the heat is inescapable. Cain and the prep cook, Chris Sheffler, seek refuge back near the refrigerator, where they open a door to the outside. They sit on a plastic cooler there during slack time.
"It's absolutely vital to have a place to go back and cool off," Cain says.
Sheffler, also from Washington, lives with Cain and three other Alaska Railroad employees in Anchorage.
"It's real interesting working in a 50-mile-per-hour kitchen," he says. "Things fly out at you--hot things."
A Weezer song plays just loud enough to talk over.
"Music's like really, really, really important," says the goateed Sheffler, 24. "We listen to a lot of funk to keep us going."
11:13 a.m.: The train rolls over a bridge at Ferry, milepost 371.2 of the Alaska Railroad. The bridge spans the Nenana River. Homesteads sit on the north and south banks of the river. A high school tour guide explains that Ferry got its name when a boat was the only mode of transportation from one part of town to another. Ferry is one of the sights tourists can see only via railroad; although the Parks Highway parallels the track in some places, the train cuts its own unique path through Alaska.
11:22 a.m.: Jenny Enderle grins in the gift shop, just behind the conductor's room. She wears a blue tie. Today she works a 14-hour day. She rides the train to Broad Pass, about 40 miles beyond Denali National Park, then catches the train back home at "the switch," where a crew of Anchorage-based student workers will do the same.
Among other items, Enderle sells books on Alaskana and baseball hats with moose heads growing out of them. A train whistle made of blond wood and stamped with the words "Alaska Railroad" is a big seller. Made in China, it costs $4.
Enderle, 19, is supervisor of a crew of high school students who work as tour guides, explaining the history of trackside sights to passengers over the public address system in each car.
Enderle, who lives in Salcha, says her job comes naturally.
"All we do is tell them about Alaska all day," she says. "And I love Alaska, so it's easy to do this job."
Easy for some. Tour guides can't sit down on the train. They also have to maintain a 14-hour smile.
11:30 a.m.: The dome car's glass ceiling makes it a greenhouse when the sun is shining, as it is this morning. It smells of hard-working deodorant. Redfearn shows his photo album to a matched pair of little boys.
11:36 a.m.: Cynthia Green and Obra Kent watch their sons' captivation with Redfearn's photos. Green's husband is in the Army at Fort Wainwright; Kent is in the Air Force, stationed at Eielson Air Force Base. The two met at their church, the Fairbanks Christian Center. They're overnighting at Denali Park with their sons, 4-year-old Gerron Kent and Sherman Green, who is six."
We did this so they would get their first experience with a train ride," Kent says.
"It's mine too--at age 30," Green says, twisting in her seat to face Kent. "There's a first time for everything."
Their boys climb over Redfearn to get a better look at a Dall sheep photo. Gerron wears a blue-and-white striped engineer's hat. It was a quiet gift from Haggart.
11:40 a.m.: Redfearn excuses himself and walks down the steps from the Dome Car. He skillfully weaves his way past people, up stairs, down stairs, immune to the drunken motion of the train. His destination is the final car on the train, a Princess car. Redfearn is required to be back there for the next section of track. The train approaches Healy Canyon.
11:45 a.m.: The train creeps through Healy Canyon at 15 miles per hour. The Nenana River is spitting distance to the east, 30 feet down. Redfearn's job is to look for anything abnormal, such as splintered rail ties, that indicate a preceding car has derailed and is being dragged over wood.
(In the four weeks after this trip, derailment will be persistent problem for the railroad. Between June 11 and July 2, Westours cars will leave the tracks on three separate occasions. While investigators try to determine the cause, the train will be limited to 10 mph on sharp curves.)
If he sees a problem on this trip, Redfearn will radio Welsh, Kauke, and Haggart, then pull a lever to set the air brakes. No problems today. The Nenana River flows cold and silty gray to the north. A cool breeze blows. Smoke from a woman's cigarette dances in an eddy.
12:17 p.m.: The train squeals to a halt in Denali Park. Haggart sets down a yellow metal step stool. The train empties.
Wind whips the smell of diesel exhaust around the throngs waiting to board the train. A group of people, who could be college students working summer jobs, hold up hand-written signs advertising destinations and services for off-boarding passengers. DENALI TAXI SERVICE. CROWS NEST. DENALI BLUFFS HOTEL. DENALI HOTEL. DENALI RIVER CABINS.
A
Westours tour leader holds up a square of red cardboard like a flag and
walks toward the train; he draws a mob of elderly people carrying red cards.
They pour into a Westours car, a viscous swarm of brightly colored pants.
Redfearn waits for Alaska Railroad passengers at the entrance of the car just behind the luggage car. A line forms several cars back.
"Everybody's trotting back there, but this is the car to see wildlife," he says while waving his arms for people to come his way. They do, looking chilly with wind-tussled hair.
"The closer you are to the engine, the more likely you are to see wildlife," he says. Eyebrows rise.
12:40 p.m.: The train pulls away from the Denali depot with a choke of black diesel smoke.
12:44 p.m.: Just over the Riley Creek trestle, the train stops. It moves backward, back to Denali Park. The freight train from Anchorage is approaching. It's time to switch tracks.
"We try not to meet here," Redfearn says. "This train should have been in Fairbanks at 6 a.m. The fire's got everything out of kilter."
"The fire" is the Big Lake fire. Two days ago it leapt the tracks south of Nancy Lake. It forced the Alaska Railroad to de-board all the passengers and bus them to Anchorage, some with wet towels over their faces.
12:55 p.m.: Redfearn, outside the train, unlocks a padlock from a large cast-iron track switching device that's taller than he is. He pulls a long lever, mating the southbound section of rail to a track parallel to the one engine 3008 rests on.
12:59 p.m.: The freight train arrives, pulling up beside the passenger train. After the crew, which has been on duty for 12 hours, is replaced, the train pulls off. Four-thousand feet of train roll by in six minutes. The tracks bow and groan under the weight.
1:40 p.m.: After a delay of almost an hour, engine 3008 rolls southward from Denali Park.
2:50 p.m.: The train stops at Broad Pass, roughly the halfway point between Fairbanks and Anchorage. A passenger train from Anchorage pulls up on a siding next to 3008. "The Switch" is on. Smiles of recognition brighten north- and south-bound faces. The trains swap passengers. Eight people step aboard 3008.
3:24 p.m.: South of Broad Pass, rain spits from bluish clouds. Redfearn and Haggart are glad to see it. Haggart lives in Wasilla, Redfearn in Petersville.
3:32 p.m.: The train creeps through cavernous Hurricane Gulch. The open air vestibules in between cars become filled with people. Breath forms clouds in the cool, moist air. The open air under the bridge inspires gasps. It's like being in a hot-air balloon.
4:07 p.m.: The Dome Car is streaked with rain. Ken Murray and his wife Carolyn drink in the wet images passing by. From Lakewood, Colo., they're nuts about trains.
"This was the one thing we planned to do first--ride the train in Alaska," Carolyn says. "If he could, he'd give his life savings to ride up front," she says, referring to Ken.
Ken confesses. "When I was a little guy growing up, an engineer lived next door. He'd let me ride with him . . . I used to go bonkers with train sets."
Ken, who has a neatly trimmed moustache the color of frost, is a physician's assistant in Lakewood; Carolyn's a registered nurse. She pored through the brochures and road maps to plan this, their first trip to Alaska.
"I did the research," she says. "As long as we got the train, that's all he cared about."
4:20
p.m.: Back in his office, Haggart gets authorization for the use of
80 more miles of track. Engine 3008 is good to Willow.
5:10 p.m.: Haggart's radio talks. It's Kauke, the engineer.
"Order me a Chilkoot Pass with some kind of chips."
"Buffalo OK?," Haggart cracks.
"As long as it's not steaming."
5:23 p.m.: Kauke walks back from the engine to get his sandwich.
5:30 p.m.: With a dark sky hovering above the Dome Car, Redfearn explodes suddenly.
"Moose! There's a moose out there!"
A bull moose, black and shiny, runs across a stream. The train lists to the east from the weight of 300 bodies.
Other than the disturbance of a few passing trains, the moose has this stretch to himself. The 50 miles of track between Hurricane Gulch and Talkeetna bends far from the Parks Highway.
6:29 p.m.: People rush into the Dome Car to see the evidence of the Big Lake fire. Just past Nancy Lake, the ground blackens. Fire has baked the birch leaves prematurely yellow; spruce needles are a dry orange. Greenery on both sides of the track is charred.
The train passes a Native firefighting crew dressed in yellow nomex shirts. A firefighter, smiling, waves with a leather-gloved hand. People wave back. After a few miles, green forest returns.
7:19 p.m.: A passenger asks Redfearn when we'll arrive in Anchorage.
"Eight-thirty-seven, give or take a half-hour," he laughs. But he quickly adds: "The Alaska Railroad has been on time three times this season, and all three times it was this crew."
8:05 p.m.: Sitting in his office, Haggart pulls out a pocket watch on a chain. On its face is the Harley Davidson symbol. He explains that in 20 minutes, he, Redfearn, Welsh and Kauke "go dead." At that time, they will have worked 12 hours, all federal law allows.
8:25 p.m.: Because of the delay waiting for the freight train at Denali Park, Haggart, Redfearn, Welsh and Kauke go dead. The train hasn't quite reached Anchorage. It's stopped at Elmendorf Air Force Base, where a fresh crew relieves Haggart's. All four remain on the train for a ride to Anchorage.
8:33 p.m.: The train rolls to a stop in Anchorage. Haggart puts down the yellow step-stool. He's off duty, but performs a volunteer service to end his day.
"I get to help the pretty girls down. That's one of the perks of the contract."
Ned Rozell is a local free-lance writer. Kate Salisbury is a local free-lance photographer, who recently began an internship with the News-Miner.