Around 1985 I was driving down a road on Elmendorf AFB that paralleled the Alaska Railroad. On a siding near the sign marking the Whitney section was a car full of scrap. It was interesting enough that it rated me going home, retrieving my 35mm camera, and snapping a few photos. Among the items was a steam locomotive cylinder block. laying in the gondola upside down.

For many years I had guessed that it came from War Department Consolidation #553, wrecked in 1943 and scrapped. Looking recently at the photos, I found a couple of clues that proved that my identification was wrong. Cast into the cylinder was BLW 31945. Although War Department Consolidations were built in 1945, none that came to Alaska were built that late. I also noticed that there was a guide bushing for a front truck centered on the underside of the cylinder block rather than a fulcrum for the front equalizer as found on the 2-8-0s. This indicated that the locomotive had a four-wheeled lead truck. Given these clues, the cylinder block can be identified as coming from #902, a 4-6-2 Pacific and the ARR's only steam locomotive built in 1945.

I have heard that it had been sitting for many years in the yard at Stano Steel, a scrap yard that was near ship creek for many years.

Everything has since changed. At one time, troops could catch the train at Whitney. By 1985, the sign and siding were the only physical evidence that the section had existed. The section house still exists, but it had been moved several years earlier to the Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry in Palmer, and was later moved to the new museum site in Wasilla. Now even the rails at Whitney are gone, removed when a major realignment of tracks on the bases was done several years ago. About the only reminder that Whitney had once existed is Whitney road, near the Alaska Railroad yards, which at one time was the road from Anchorage to Whitney.

Dick Morris
5/21/18