B&W gallery: Whitehorse loco

One of the attractions of a visit to a wild, largely empty state like Alaska or the Yukon is the

passion people have for just being there. The Yukon is part of, and contiguous with, the rest

of Canada, but Alaska is full of people who want to get away from the 'Lower 48', and are

quite happy at minus 30° for several months of the year. They get around by floatplane

more so than by car: there are few roads and even fewer railways (only two routes, as far

as I know, one from Skagway in SE Alaska, the starting point for the trek to the gold fields in

‘98, to Whitehorse, where the narrow-gauge meets the Yukon river system, and the other is

the mainline from Fairbanks to Anchorage and just beyond into the Kenai peninsula). This

latter almost became a BBC commission: having seen our pilot for a film of the rescue of a

dozen Finnish steam locomotives from the scrapyard, they wanted the director and me for a

‘Great Railway Journey’ on that 600-mile Alaskan epic, with the late Carrie Fisher presenting.

Alas, it wasn’t to be – it turned out that ‘ours’ was a stand-by commission in case any of the

others in the series failed for whatever reason, and they didn’t.

This remnant of the early days of locomotion in the Yukon sits outside one of the best little

museums I’ve ever seen - to life and survival on this harsh frontier, with a major component

being the history of the native peoples of the American Northwest.

One of the attractions of a visit to a wild, largely empty state like Alaska or the Yukon is the

passion people have for just being there. The Yukon is part of, and contiguous with, the rest of

Canada, but Alaska is full of people who want to get away from the 'Lower 48', and are quite

happy at minus 30° for several months of the year. They get around by floatplane more so

than by car: there are few roads and even fewer railways (only two routes, as far as I know,

one from Skagway in SE Alaska, the starting point for the trek to the gold fields in ‘98, to

Whitehorse, where the narrow-gauge meets the Yukon river system, and the other is the

mainline from Fairbanks to Anchorage and just beyond into the Kenai peninsula). This latter

almost became a BBC commission: having seen our pilot for a film of the rescue of a dozen

Finnish steam locomotives from the scrapyard, they wanted the director and me for a ‘Great

Railway Journey’ on that 600-mile Alaskan epic, with the late Carrie Fisher presenting. Alas, it

wasn’t to be – it turned out that ‘ours’ was a stand-by commission in case any of the others in

the series failed for whatever reason, and they didn’t.

This remnant of the early days of locomotion in the Yukon sits outside one of the best little

museums I’ve ever seen - to life and survival on this harsh frontier, with a major component

being the history of the native peoples of the American Northwest.