Seward Freight Back in 2011 export coal was still running and the business was growing, but those trains were the only freight you could regularly count on to see on the southern 60 miles of the Alaska Railroad mainline between Portage and Seward. Therefore any extra freights were a rare treat and not to be missed if they ran in daylight. This was a rare and fortunate opportunity when the ARRC dispatched a 110S extra on a weekend and in daylight no less! The southbound train from Anchorage to Seward was flat cars laden with empty containers and flat decks that had come north full of lumber on an SBS (Spenard Builders Supply) barge. Most winters when Cook Inlet and the Port of Anchorage iced up you could count on a few of these barges to berth in Seward necessitating the rare opportunity for these non-coal freight trains. Here are three SD70MACs curling off the 720 foot long Snow River bridge at MP 14.5 about to bite into the 2% climb to Divide Summit for the last time before drifting down to tidewater only a dozen miles away. Primrose, Alaska |
