MOW Sheds.

While on my tour of the tracks of JBER, Steve Katkus showed me an area where the MOW sheds and equipment are stored. The first shed on the left looks like it's an original Alaska Railroad building or built sometime before the 1940s. It's still painted in the old green and white trim that was standard for the ARR buildings and depots until the introduction of the yellow/gold. The shed on the right may have been built 1940s on but before the yellow/gold. A speeder setout is on the far left but heavily grown over.

I believe these were moved here from other locations along the ARR railbelt, but from locations close to the base such as Whitney, or possibly from Sutton, Matanuska, or south of Anchorage. Whitney seems logical though since it was the closet location to the base.

There are two other sheds a few yards south of this spot that are of the same construction as the smaller green shed but are in the MOW grey/white and are in poor condition. These to are open to look inside while the other sheds are locked up, most likely full of tools and supplies and things that are not EPA friendly.

Currently the track in this area has been pulled up and is being completely reconstructed for future use. If anyone has knowledge of where the buildings came from, I ask you to please share what you may know. 9/13/20

Bill Haggart adds, "Been there for at least 50 years imagine they were there since WWII at least all tracks on Fort Rich were a loop with warehouses with a 3-4 cat siding alternating sides of loop. So you could zigzag around even if bombed."

Rick Leggett adds, "My ex-FIL was the foreman for the track crew on Fort Rich for about 30 years (he retired about 1978), then an ex-ARR employee (actually two) became the track foremen after him. They abolished the track jobs in the late 80's, but those sheds weren't moved from the ARR...and is what the Fort Rich MOW crew worked out of."

Photographs courtesy Mike Gerenday