The White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad, Scenic Views Like No Where Else

The narrow-gauge White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad, located in Alaska, is the busiest tourist railroad in the country, even more popular than the legendary Strasburg Railroad, due to the line’s spectacular scenery and limitless supply of tourists aboard cruise ships that dock at Skagway. While the WP&YR today is a very successful tourist railroad its heritage lies as a freight hauler, once serving several ore mines located between Skagway, Alaska and the Yukon Territory of Canada (which is another unique feature of the railroad, its lines are split with half operated in the United States and the other half in Canada). While the Alaska Railroad offers some spectacular scenery of its own few train rides anywhere in the world offer such stunning scenery as the WP&YR.

The White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad dates back to 1897 and the Klondike Gold Rush. Needing a better means of moving men and material through the extremely rugged regions of northern Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon Territory (via the White and Chilkoot Passes), a railroad was chartered (the White Pass & Yukon Railway Company) and construction began in 1898. By 1900 the WP&Y had built a 110-mile line between the Alaska port of Skagway to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory (with the important town of Carcross located about half-way along the line).

Here is a further history of the WP&YR courtesy of the railroad itself: “The White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad was considered an impossible task but it was literally blasted through coastal mountains in only 26 months. The $10 million project was the product of British financing, American engineering and Canadian contracting. Tens of thousands of men and 450 tons of explosives overcame harsh and challenging climate and geography to create ‘the railway built of gold.’ The WP&YR climbs almost 3000 feet in just 20 miles and features steep grades of up to 3.9%, cliff-hanging turns of 16 degrees, two tunnels and numerous bridges and trestles. The steel cantilever bridge was the tallest of its kind in the world when it was constructed in 1901.

White Pass & Yukon Route became a fully integrated transportation company operating docks, trains, stagecoaches, sleighs, buses, paddlewheelers, trucks, ships, airplanes, hotels and pipelines. It provided the essential infrastructure servicing the freight and passenger requirements of Yukon's population and mining industry. WP&YR proved to be a successful transportation innovator and pioneered the inter-modal (ship-train-truck) movement of containers.

The WP&YR suspended operations in 1982 when Yukon's mining industry collapsed due to low mineral prices. The railway was reopened in 1988 as a seasonal tourism operation and served 37,000 passengers. Today, the WP&YR is Alaska's most popular shore excursion carrying over 431,000 passengers in 2006 during the May to September tourism season operating on the first 67.5 miles (Skagway, Alaska to Carcross, Yukon) of the original 110 mile line.”

The White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad is currently one of two operating railroads in Alaska (the other being the famous Alaska Railroad), although it is purely for tourism after freight service ended in 1982 after the final mine it served closed that year, which then forced the railroad to cease operations. It reopened in 1988 as a 40-mile tourist line and has grown by leaps and bounds since then. Today it is the nation’s busiest tourist railroad, thanks in part to the thousands of yearly passengers it receives from cruise ships that literally dock right next to the rails.

Aside from the tremendous scenery afforded during trips, another draw of the WP&YR is that it uses eleven unique shovelnose diesels, built by General Electric between 1954 and 1966 and the railroad also operates two Baldwin steamers, a Mikado 2-8-2, and a 2-8-0 type. The railroad has grown so much over the last twenty years that in 2007 it reopened 27 more miles of the original line, north to Carcross in the Yukon. For more information about riding the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad or to just learn more about the railroad please click here to visit their website.

For more information on tourist trains like the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad you might want to consider the book Empire State Railway Museum's Tourist Trains 2006 from the Empire State Railway Museum. Given excellent reviews this guidebook covers nearly all of the tourist railroads and museums operating in the country in fine detail. So, if you’re interested in locating a tourist train or railroad near you, or simply want to know more about a particular one, you will certainly not be disappointed in Empire State Railway Museum’s guidebook to tourist railroads and museums. If you're interested in perhaps purchasing this book please visit The Railroad Diamond by clicking the tab in the menu to your left marked "TRD Store".