Looking Back At The Back

Another from this great chase more than a dozen years ago and one that I think proves that shooting the DP units on the rear of a train is a worthy and honorable pursuit! This is the caption I wrote back in the day as I try to get all my photos from RP over into their appropriate Flickr album:

Three SD70MACs are seen bringing up the rear of a 70 car unit coal train as it coils around a curve near MP66 and heads toward the Twenty Mile River and the marshy flats around Portage. On the head end of this train are three big EMD sisters. Use of six units precludes the train from having to double the "hill" at Grandview which features 3% grades and 14 degree curves only a dozen miles to the south.

Alas, as those of you have read here with captions on other photos, a decade later big export coal trains are but a memory in the Last Frontier....at least we have the photos from those halcyon days.

North of Portage, Alaska
Saturday November 14, 2009