Northbound Blade Train

One of the most exciting projects of 2012 that I had a big hand in during my time as Superintendent was the Alaska Railroad's support of the Eva Creek Wind Farm construction. This 24 megawatt 12 turbine Golden Valley Electric Association (GVEA) project was installed high on the hills east of Ferry, Alaska.
 
The amazing thing about Ferry is that it is not on the road network meaning all the components had to come in by rail, and then trucked up an old mining road reaching 10 miles into the hills that first had to be rebuilt! The towers, hubs, and nacelles all arrived in the port of Anchorage and were trucked to Healy due to clearance issues on the railroad. There they were loaded on to flat cars and shuttled 10 miles north to the offload side across the Nenana River at Ferry.
 
The blades, however were built in the US and took an all rail routing to the port of Seattle and then traveled by rail barge to Whittier. The blades were each just over 148 feet long and traveled in three dedicated trains consisting of 12 blades each all the way from Whittier to Ferry.
 
Here on the summer solstice we see one such special train accelerating north from Anchorage just past the station site of Elmendorf as seen from the Vandenberg Drive overpass near MP 118.4. This location is inside Joint Base Elemendorf-Richardson.
 
To learn more about the Eva Creek project check out this video from GVEA.
 
Anchorage, Alaska
Thursday June 21, 2012