That posting of the almost unbelievable bush tramway in New Zealand closely preceded my stumbling on this picture from Alaska which seemed similarly unbelievable. Posting photos on the discussion forum can lead to unintended consequences, such as discovering items that have been residing in the file cabinet undisturbed for many years. This picture is one I brought back from my first trip to Nome, Alaska. I went there in the fall of 1993 to dig a set of narrow gauge flat car trucks out of the tundra and get them shipped to Pasco, Washington. The trucks were intended for building a new tender for 1878 Porter 0-6-0 "Blue Mountain" , ex-Walla Walla & Columbia River RR that ran on the Seward Peninsula RR from 1905 to 1910. That is a story to be related some day.

The 3-foot gauge Seward Peninsula RR still existed in 1993 and I walked many miles of the long-disused railroad (no, not all 110 miles). After the end of steam operations in 1910 the railroad became a public railroad anyone could use with their own vehicles, the most popular being pup mobiles as shown on the attached photo, likely taken in the 1920s or 1930s. The back of the picture shows the location as Salmon Lake, 40 miles from Nome (no, I didn't hike that far- there were far too many berries to pick, plus the grizzly bear chasing a group of mooses across the valley was a bit unnerving). What the status of the narrow gauge line is today I don't know. Back in 1993 parts of the line could probably still have supported a light pupmobile.



The Blue Mountain operating as Seward Peninsula Railroad Number 4, 1905 - 1910





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2019 10:59PM by Olaf Rasmussen.