page hits since September 2005
The Sterling Alaska Railroad page
In 1975 my younger brother and I got a Tyco train set for Christmas and I blame that event for my railroad fascination. During our great pilgrimage of 1976 to 1978 traveling around the United States I was always keeping an eye on the tracks whenever we were near them. While I was busy reading model railroad magazines and designing layouts on paper I also started taking a few photos of trains that we could get close to. These early photos are not the greatest but I was learning.
After we moved back to Alaska and stopped traveling I was eager to do a model train layout but we moved around a bit for awhile and space was limited for the modeling. I did however start to take pictures of the Alaska Railroad at this time. At first I was using B&W then switched to color prints, and then slide film. (In 2002 I gave in and bought a digital camera and since then the film cameras have rarely been used.) The first rolls were developed at Long's Drug until they lost a roll, that is when I started using the slide mailers. The bulk of my Alaska Railroad photographs are 35mm Kodachrome 64 (some 25) Kodak mailer processed slides. It really helped that my father at this time opened a camera store and I had access to dealer prices for film and mailers. Also for my birthday in 1980 he let me pick out a camera from the store and I went straight to the Nikon showcase and pointed at a Nikon F2. Using money from my job at the local model train store (Trains Unlimited I think it was) I bought three extra lenses and a motor drive, now I could really burn up the film!
Since at this time period (1978 - 1981) I did not drive I was at the mercy of friends to take me railfanning. I owe a lot of the early action shots and non summer vacation pictures to my dad and Gary Munsey. During summer vacations I would take my bicycle across town to the lagoon to get pictures of the Whittier Shuttle and gravel trains going by. I would also get on the city bus and go downtown on a nice day to watch the morning passenger train leave and then I would walk around the rail yard and take pictures. I was just a kid with a camera so I was never tossed out. I think I was there so often that they got used to me! Things are a little different now and the need for security is a reality we all face. In 1982 I got my first car ( a 1969 Toyota Landcruiser) and I became more portable but this also caused more interference with my railfanning as "priorities" were changing. As you will see from the photos, I did not take many ARR pictures after 1982 until recently when the interest came back.
What you will see will be a good representation of what the Alaska Railroad was like around 1979 to 1982. It was a neat time as the first generation diesels were still going but the new power and new paint schemes were starting to take over. The passenger tourism business was picking up but the cruise ship operators were not in on it yet. It was a good transition period to be taking photos of the Alaska Railroad. Some of the pictures on the below pages are of earlier time periods that when I was photographing the Alaska Railroad, but I was given the photos or slides or traded my own slides to get them so I have included them in this showcase of the Alaska Railroad. These photos will be marked as "collection of" in the descriptions otherwise all photographs were taken by myself.
If anyone has more information to supply for a photo caption or a correction to a caption please feel free to email me about it! Also I would not be against anyone that wants to submit photos or slides to be scanned onto the webpage. I do sell slides of the ARR in small batches on eBay from time to time, just do a search for "Alaska Railroad" or for seller "256611" which is me on eBay. I might be interested in trading for slides of older ARR locomotives that I do not have, just drop me an Email.
For another Alaska Railroad railfan webpage that goes more in depth in all the past, present and future details of the ARR including up-to-date current news of the ARR, I highly recommend John Combs John's Alaska Railroad Web Page. John is the one that egged me on to create my web site, he said he wanted a little more variety out there in cyberspace that dealt with the Alaska Railroad. Thanks for the push to get me going John!
Enjoy!
Click on the subject of your choice to see the photos!
Click on any photo to get a larger version!
New photos will be marked with the arrow until the next update
No commercial use of these images is permitted without the written consent of both the image owner and/or myself. Please ask before posting any images to another website.
page hits since September 2005