Working The AquaTrain

Continuing with a little series of ancient photos I dug up and briefly re-edited.

More sad news from Alaska as Frank Keller reported that the final AquaTrain sailed from Whittier to Prince Rupert last week ending just shy of six decades of service and wiping Alaska from Canadian National’s system map for the first time since 1962. So let’s take a look back at what was lost. After their first two decades of service the CN made a major commitment when they contracted with Shin-A shipbuilding to build the then world’s largest railcar barge at 400 feet long by 100 feei wide with a capacity for 45 standard 50 foot freight cars on eight tracks. Launched in 1982 and sailing from Prince Rupert, BC the AquaTrain offered the shortest railcar service to Alaska at only 600 miles slip to slip. At its peak the barge operated on roughly a 12 day cycle making 30 complete round trips to Alaska annually.

As a CN service the physical and paper interchange with the Alaska Railroad was Whittier northbound and returning southbound cars actually went off demurrage in Anchorage where they staged pending the next cycled arrival. Operated by Foss Maritime on behalf of CN she was towed by either the Justine Foss or the Barbara Foss, 4300 HP twin screw tugs both built in 1976 by McDermott Shipyards of New Iberia, LA. At least for now Foss still lists this service on their web site and you can check it out here.  And while the CN has deleted the AquaTrain service from their corporate home page this advertising video they produced less than a year ago can still be found here.

Anyway, my all time favorite image of this barge is this aerial view seen here.

These go back even longer to a seemingly different lifetime just three days after my 30th birthday and just into my first months in Alaska having only just moved up from Utah. These images were captured with a point and shoot digital even before having traded in my old 35mm Rebel for my first digital SLR. But that little thing did okay I suppose, and these are better than nothing considering they were taken some 14 years ago on a rare brilliantly clear day in this normally dismal Prince William sound community. Here we see the barge being worked as an idler flat reaches across the slip on to the barge passing beside the half century old cable winch toward that raised and lowered the slip.

Whittier, Alaska
Sunday June 3, 2007 

Photo courtesy of Dave Blazejewski