Coal At Twentymile

Another from this great chase more than a dozen years ago and one that I feel yet again proves that shooting the Distributed Power (DP) units on the rear of a train is a worthy and honorable pursuit! This is the caption I wrote back in the day as I try to get all my photos from RailPictures.net over into their appropriate Flickr album:

Three SD70MACs are seen on the rear of a 70 car unit coal train as it crosses the icy tidal waters of the Twenty Mile River at MP 64.7 just a hundred yards or so from its mouth on Turnagain Arm. The river's waters flow from its namesake glacier up the valley and out of sight to the left. On the point out of view are three more big EMD sisters. Use of six units precludes the train from having to double the "hill" at Grandview which features 3% grades and 14 degree curves.

Addendum: Alas, as those of you have read here with captions on other photos, a decade later big export coal trains are but a memory in the Last Frontier....At least we have photos like these to look back on those halcyon days.

Portage, Alaska
Saturday November 14, 2009