How a Twenty-Dollar Bill Brought the Train in On-Time

Before airplanes, the main arteries of civilization were rivers, and the railroad, with miles and miles of track being laid from the coast deep into the interior regions. At first the trains ran supplies out to the gold mining regions, but soon they were supplying all the little communities that popped up along the way.

The Alaskan Range from the side of the tracks (Hurricane, AK).

While in Talkeetna, we went on one of the last flag trains in Alaska, where would-be riders need only flag the train to get it to stop. Called the Hurricane Turn, it ran 110 miles from Talkeetna to Hurricane Gulch and then back.



With almost no scheduled stops, Conductor Warren was free to stop the train not just wherever a passenger wanted to get off (sometimes seemingly in the middle of nowhere only to be told by Warren that there was a cabin over the rise, or a trail head not far off) but also at various scenic overlooks, or to show off his favorite camping spot on the Indian River, and for any wildlife sightings along the way.

Bank of the Indian River, 

near Conductor Warren's favorite camping spot.

Trumpeter Swan nest seen from the train.

Trestle Bridge along the route

Hunters, campers, rafters as well as residents of small communities use the train on a regular basis. One stop is at the smallest town in Alaska, population 2. Another is at the ghost town of Curry, which was once a thriving resort, with a three-hole golf course, a ski hill, and a 170-room hotel, as well as a refueling stop for the steam engines headed farther north. Once diesel engines entered the picture, and trains no longer needed to stop for refueling, the town slowly dwindled through the 1950s, only to die completely with the burning down of the resort in 1957 and the closing of the post office a few years later.

Alaska's smallest town (population 2)

From Conductor Warren we also learned conductors are responsible not only for keeping the train on schedule, but also for checking the engine speedometer for accuracy at the beginning of each trip. Nowadays they do this by means of a GPS, but in the old days, before the use of welded rails, the engineer would have to count the number of clicks he heard in a space of twenty-seven seconds as the train passed over the rail joints (bolted rail has gaps at each joint, whereas welded does not) with the conductor marking the time. The number of clicks would equal the speed in miles per hour, telling the conductor how accurate or inaccurate the speedometer was, so he could make the necessary adjustments in his timekeeping.

He also said a good conductor should know how to motivate his engineers. For instance, his current engineer will do almost anything for a free pizza, where as one of his former engineers, one that ran the longer route from Denali to Anchorage, loved beer. On one trip, the engine caught fire not long after they had left Denali, requiring a change of trains in Healy and an hour delay. With a little over 200 miles before they reached Anchorage, he knew they could make up the time - if the engineer had the right incentive. So Warren went up to the front, taped a twenty-dollar bill to the windshield and told the engineer, "Get us to Anchorage on time and the first round is on me."

Looking down from the bridge spanning Hurricane Gulch.

The train came in on time.