Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
— 12 —
I Hear the Train A-Coming…
I RODE THE ALASKA RAILROAD from Anchorage to Fairbanks in the early Seventies to get
to the University of Alaska. It took a minimum of twelve hours, because the train would
stop what seemed like every five minutes to let off a hunter, or pick up a fisherman, or drop
off supplies for a homesteader, or wait for a moose to get off the tracks. The best place to
ride it out was the bar car, where all the Alaskan old farts would gather to knock back Bud-
weiser and tell lies about the good old days before statehood and how THEY never voted
for it. When the train got to the outskirts of Fairbanks the engineer would slow the train to
a crawl so that all the students headed for UAF could pitch their luggage out and jump after
it. It was a softer landing in January, when there was snow, but it saved walking the four
miles back from the downtown depot, and we were grateful for the opportunity at any time
of year.
Nowadays the railroad has been taken over by the tourists, carrying cruise line passen-
gers from Seward to Anchorage to Denali to Fairbanks, and the train is just a blue and gold
clackety-clack from beside the tracks. There's the shuttle to the Alaska State Fair, and the
ski train in February, but as a rule Alaskans don't ride the train as much as they used to.
Except for the Hurricane Turn.
The Hurricane Turn is a flagstop operation between Talkeetna and Hurricane that runs
Thursday through Sunday all summer long. It's usually one Budd rail diesel car, with one
conductor and one engineer. They leave the downtown Talkeetna depot at noon and get
back, oh, maybe around six p.m., depending on how often they get waved down on the
way.
I boarded the Hurricane Turn one Saturday in late August. The sun was shining and the
mountain was out. “Left side for the view,” Mark Butler, one of the passengers, told me as I
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