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Written by Lindsay Korst
gngoat@gngoat.org
Alaska by Rail 2025
Special Interest Tours - Trains Magazine
Friday, September 5th
Day Two
Fairbanks to Denali Park
An early start today, the first of many. We would be riding
Alaska Railroad's
Denali Star, Goldstar Service in segments, north to south, with side trips along
the way. I really like the dark blue and gold paint scheme. Very
classy.
Let's take a look at today's train:
ARR 4319/4323, a pair of hefty 4300hp EMD SD70MACs, would lead us south. ARR has
a whole fleet of these units and
proudly touts them on their website. My
only regret is I wasn't able to get a good head-end shot before leaving town.
The rest of the consist is as follows:
ARR 102, ex-Union Pacific, American Car & Foundry built 1961 baggage car.
ARR 654, Colorado Railcar Manufacturing built 2007 Goldstar Service Ultradome "A".
ARR 652, Colorado Railcar Manufacturing built 2005 Goldstar Service Ultradome "B". This was the car we rode in.
ARR 452, ex-Chicago & North Western old bi-level, Pullman Standard 1958 diner.
ARR 205, Daewoo Heavy Industries 1989, Korean built, single-level coach.
ARR 522, This one deserves two images. A classic 1954 Budd dome car, ex-Northern Pacific.
Bringing up the rear, were a pair of
Wilderness Express cars WEX 1003 "Ekluna" and WEX
1001 "Yentna". Shortly after I took this picture, a pair of tour buses pulled up
and loaded onto these cars.
Thanks to these two links for helping me identify the
equipment:
https://www.alaskarails.org/fp/passenger/passenger-roster.html
http://www.trainweb.org/rosters/ARR.html
Our itinerary stated breakfast would be served onboard immediately after
boarding. This perked up my little ears, as I remembered
a similar trip we took
in Canada. Same type of equipment. One of the little secrets of these huge
double deck cars is there is not enough dining space downstairs or in an
adjacent diner. So it's "first seating" and "second seating".
Guess which
seating our group got. That's right, second seating. They sat us down (facing
backwards) to eat "breakfast" about 10:15am.
Of course, armed with this previous bit of knowledge, B and I had hit the hotel coffee
shop when it opened at 6:30am and thus fed, were most understanding and gracious
about any onboard food delays. <VBG>
With grim resolve, the prisoners shuffled past to whatever fate awaited them, at
"first seating".
We're on our way!; Lindsay and Baolu were delighted to find
out each ticket included two free drinks from the bar.; When you travel with a
group, they make up names to put on our tickets. Saves time.
Just a bit of scenery and then we were called downstairs for "second
seating". I believe we are located in ARR diner 452.
Any attempt to photograph our locomotives from inside, results
in the above distorted gobbledygook. Shooting from outside is the way to
go ---- if it isn't raining too hard.
According to the running commentary, Winston the Beaver lives
in this pond. I'm pretty sure the crews made this story up to amuse themselves.
Still, it was a most enjoyable and scenic ride rolling from Fairbanks to Denali Park
station today.
Our motor-coach driver, Ben, was at the station to greet us and had already had
our bags transferred to our rooms by the
Grande Denali Lodge staff.
This was a recurring luxury throughout our trip. I could learn
to like this.
A buffet lunch awaited us at the Alpenglow Restaurant and we
had the afternoon off to relax in our rooms.
At 5pm, we bussed over to the "Alaska Cabin Nite Dinner Theater". By this time, I
was starting to crash from two days of sleep deprivation and those hard wooden
bench seats...oh my aching bum-bum. The kids on stage were good, but
adding dinner in the mix was a little too much.
 
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