Big Dwight Let’s continue this little series with a look at some more great railroaders from The Last Frontier. We’re heading back into the cab for some more portraits of enginemen. This guy might look serious in this photo, and though he most assuredly took his job seriously, he never quite seemed to take life as serious. And by that I mean he had that good natured Alaskan spirit and just never seemed to let the railroad get to him. A big man, with a big voice, and a big personality….that’s what I remember about Dwight Harris. You always knew he was in the room, and the room was better for it. Just another great railroader I worked with for six years. According to what I read on social media, Dwight has pulled the pin too and has moved on from Alaska and is keeping warm and seemingly having the time of his life retired in fabulous Las Vegas…a city maybe big enough for his personality! I hope he’s happy and healthy cause he earned it. Here he is more than a decade ago looking out the side window from the small engineer’s compartment on ARR 751, the Colorado Railcar DMU. At the time 751 was newly delivered having only been in service a few months and was still self-propelled. Alas the one-off car never lived up to expectations and after a couple of seasons it was relegated to non-powered service as basically a giant double deck glass topped cab control car on the Glacier Discovery train to Grandview and Whittier. But on this day, Dwight was actually in control of the 1280 horses generated by twin six cylinder Detroit Diesels providing power through a Voith turbo transmission, and not electric traction motors. I’ll post more photos of this unique car in service sometime in the future for those interested in it, but this post is about the man in charge. Portage, Alaska
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