80 Miles To Go... With 52 loaded aluminum hoppers and four SD70MACs running 2x2 DPU this train would turn out to be the final loaded export coal train ever to run to Seward. After 32 years of exporting coal from Usibelli Mine on the north side of the Alaska Range to markets in Korea, China, Japan, Chile and beyond the market had simply evaporated. In 2011 we purchased 70 additional aluminum hoppers to cycle two complete train sets making two 720 mile round trips per week and delivered just about 1.1 million metric tons to 18 ships. This was the best year in the history of the Alaskan export market, and in fact we were working on plans to get to over 2 million! But from those halcyon days the business evaporated just as quickly as it had boomed, and four years later only four colliers called on the terminal at the head of Resurrection Bay. With only one ship for all of 2016 the ARRC call it quits and laid off the 16 employees in Seward, mothballed the facility, and sold off the hoppers. The south end of the railroad has been pretty quiet since...seeing only summer passenger trains and no more freights as you can count on one hand in a good year. So this was a sad day....a sad day indeed. But for a final time revel in the sight of a pair of blue and gold MACs trailing the final loads of Healy black diamonds through the rock cut south of the Seward Highway overpass at Bird Point, near MP 80.9. Once those final 80 miles are ticked off they will truly have reached the end of the line. Sic Transit Gloria... Bird Point, Alaska |
