This was posted on the Facebook White Pass site:
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The White Pass & Yukon Route railway will welcome a fleet of six modern locomotives to its complement this summer.
“The last few years, the White Pass has been really exciting, and this is just the cherry on top,” Jacqueline Taylor-Rose, White Pass’ manager of marketing, told the Star last month.
It’s the first time White Pass has invested in new locomotives since the 1960s, and the upgrade is long overdue, according to Mark Taylor, White Pass’ superintendent of rail operations.
The current fleet was acquired in the mid-1950s. It will be relegated to secondary status for company and yard service use after the new fleet is inaugurated.
“They’ve outlived their useful lives,” Taylor said of the 70-year-old locomotives.
The new locomotives will be cleaner, quieter and more fuel-efficient, Taylor said.
They also carry twice the capacity of their predecessors, and their size will be of a huge advantage to the railway line.
The larger capacity means the railway can reduce the number of locomotives in its fleet.
“It’s tremendously more efficient from a maintenance perspective,” Taylor said.
“They’re a modern design, relatively inexpensive, pretty much off-the-shelf standardized locomotive components.”
The “off-the-shelf” components mean that when problems arise, it will be much easier to replace parts than with the 1950s models.
The locomotives are currently under construction by National Railway Equipment Company in Mount Vernon, Illinois. According to Taylor, two of the six are nearing completion and have been painted.
The first two locomotives are painted the traditional green and yellow, while the remainder of the fleet will be a modified paint scheme.
Once the locomotives are finished, they’ll be shipped to Seattle via flat car, then to Skagway via barge. Taylor said the first locomotive is scheduled for delivery in March, and they’ll be put into operation as soon as they arrive.
The White Pass route is a narrow-gauge railway, meaning the track is narrower than the standard 1,435 mm (four ft., eight inches).
Taylor said the track is “a bit of an anomaly” compared to other North American railway routes and was the only unique stipulation in procuring new locomotives.
The railway has undergone some major improvements since new ownership took over the 120-year-old railway in August 2018, Taylor said.
These include track improvements to allow heavier locomotives and a new loop at the White Pass summit.
The loop allows trains to turn around, no longer requiring a second engine to drive in the opposite direction.
Taylor-Rose said business has been booming for White Pass in recent years, thanks in part to cruise ship traffic in Skagway. Last summer, the railway boarded half a million passengers.
“Industry has been so strong the past two years and we were able to grow with that demand,” Taylor-Rose said.
The White Pass marketing team is preparing an official announcement of the new locomotives before they go into service this summer.
“It’s pretty big news for our small community,” she said.
White Pass offered passenger service between Whitehorse and Skagway until 1982, when the Faro lead-zinc mine began a four-year closure.
The railway had been hauling the concentrates to Skagway after they had been trucked from Faro to Whitehorse.
When that revenue became unavailable to White Pass, the Whitehorse-Skagway link had to be eliminated.
