William Root's Trip Report

This provides a capsule of winter operations on the ARR in the early/mid 70's. The photos were taken in October, but I don't remember whether is was 1974, or 1975. The bicentennial paint scheme on some of the equipment may give a clue. The time frame was late October, and from old schedules I reconstructed the trains ran as mixed twice a week. I don't remember which day I rode (Tues/Wed or Sat/Sun), but there was only a handful of passengers for a fairly lengthy consist. The train was virtually empty, except for a Native American couple and their children, a couple of homesteaders who got off at a flag stop in the wilderness, and perhaps 4 or 5 other passengers. The crew from Anchorage to Healy were very friendly and the conductor offered a cab ride, which of course I accepted. We went to the cab of the F unit via empty baggage cars, nose doors and engine rooms. I don't remember the engine crew's name, but I believe the engineer was named Miller (he wore a lot of turquoise) and like the train crew very friendly. I rode for an hour, or two, into Denali, then went back to the coaches. Had lunch in the diner lounge and enjoyed the scenery into Fairbanks, including a meet with a southbound manifest freight. We backed into a spur track for that meet at a place I believe was called Honolulu. Unfortunately I came down with a bad cold that night in Fairbanks and the trip back was pretty miserable. I took no further photos.