by Rob Bell/photos as noted
Like most railroads, the White Pass & Yukon Route needed to perform its own maintenance on, builds, and rebuilds of the locomotives and rolling stock fleet. Skagway, Alaska, is 1,027 nautical miles (1,181 statute miles) from Vancouver, B.C. Generally, this is a three to four day journey by ship or barge. From the beginning, the WP&YR built much of the rolling stock in Skagway, thereby saving large shipping costs. A large roundhouse and other maintenance facilities were constructed at the north end of Skagway and became known as “Shops” (Milepost 2). Aside from the roundhouse, “Shops” had a boiler house, a blacksmith shop, a tin shop, a rotary shed, a machine shop, and a foundry. A spare steam engine was most likely used to move equipment under repair into and out of the stalls or around the shops. The shop crews would have to wait on a locomotive to arrive from the road or take valuable time away from the Skagway switcher crew to perform a move. Or maybe they would have to fire up a spare steam engine well in advance for use. The use of a steam engine to move some piece of rolling stock around the shops was not efficient time-wise, manpower-wise, or fuel-wise.
This first roundhouse burned to the ground in February 1932 with a replacement roundhouse erected quickly in order to rebuild the four engines lost in the fire. The shop crews needed their own switcher to move equipment around the shops complex.The Skagit Steel & Iron Works (SSIW) was famous for the many adaptations for the Fordson tractors of the 1920s. A Fordson-powered “critter” was built by SSIW for Charles Frye in 1924. Charles Frye was the owner of a 1,200-acre lettuce farm east of Monroe, Wash. Employing up to 1,000 people, the Frye Lettuce Farm grew to 2,000 acres by the 1930s. The farm had an extensive narrow gauge rail system for transporting the produce from the fields to the packing plant. The Great Depression eventually won out and the lettuce farm collapsed during the 1930s. The 27-horsepower Fordson was sold to the White Pass & Yukon Route in 1936 for the shop crews to use.
ABOVE: The Skagit Steel & Iron Works converted this Fordson tractor into a locomotive in 1924 for Charles Frye for use on his lettuce farm. This farm was east of Monroe, Wash., and covered up to 2,000 acres. After the farm went bankrupt in 1934, this locomotive was sold to White Pass & Yukon Route for use as a shop switcher. —Unknown photographer, Museum of History and Industry, Seattle, Bruce Pryor Collection
The Fordson was numbered 3 and was the second locomotive to have this number. The ability to start up the Fordson when needed must have been such a convenience for the shop crews. No more did they have to wait on the Skagway switcher or plan a day ahead to use a spare steam engine. The shop crews made numerous modifications to the switcher including the addition of sandboxes and additional weight. A small crane was fitted to the switcher in 1939 so that wheels could be lifted into and out of a wheel lathe in the shop. The switcher was instrumental in the assembly of WP&YR locomotive numbers 70 and 71 when they were purchased from Baldwin in 1938-1939. The Fordson was retired in 1943 and scrapped in 1946.
The arrival of a United States Army Plymouth switcher in 1943 may have lead to the retirement of Fordson no. 3. U.S.A. 7651 was a 20-ton Plymouth ML-6 built in July 1942 for operation on a narrow gauge line in Nome, Alaska. Nome is on the southern coast of the Seward Peninsula at the western end of Alaska and on the Bering Sea. It is about 1,000 miles (straight-line distance) from Skagway.
ABOVE: Sometime between 1959 and 1962, No. 3 received this yellow and green paint scheme. The back side of the roundhouse can be seen at the left side of the photo. —Unknown photographer, Boerries Burkhardt collection
Nome had its own gold rush that began in 1898 when three Nordic-Americans found gold on Anvil Creek in September. By 1900 Nome had grown to a town of 10,000 and the 3-foot gauge Wild Goose Railroad began with six and one-half miles of track. Three years later, the line was sold and renamed the Nome-Arctic Railway. In 1906, the line was sold and renamed the Seward Peninsula Railroad. The line was then extended more than eighty miles to the Kougarok River. During the summer months the railroad constantly fought the spongy tundra that the roadbed was built upon. During the late 1920s, the Alaska Road Commission took control and allowed operation of the line as an animal powered tram. Dogs pulled much of the freight and passenger traffic loaded on various carts known as “pupmobiles.”
With the start of WWII, as with Skagway and Whitehorse, Nome saw the U.S. Army move in to improve aviation in the area. Nome’s airfield was built and was the last stop for aircraft en route to the Soviet Union as part of the Lend-Lease Program. It was from here that Soviet flyers finished ferrying planes built in America to the U.S.S.R. It was during this time that the Army attempted to use the railroad to move supplies and used one, possibly two, ML-6 locomotives from Plymouth on the line. U.S.A. 7651 was Plymouth construction no. 4471, weighed twenty tons, and had a LeRoi six-cylinder gasoline engine that produced 175 horsepower. Rumors are that these Plymouths were too heavy for the spongy roadbed and derailed often. Number 7651 was transferred to the Army’s operation in Skagway.
ABOVE: Soon after the round-house fire of 1969, the WP&YR bought two 25-ton General Electric locomotives from the Colorado Fuel & Iron company. They were built in 1947 and were CF&I 6 and 10 and were renumbered 1 and 2 by White Pass. No. 1 (the 2nd engine to have this number) was given this yellow and green paint scheme before 1977. No. 1 was retired in 1979 and sold in 1981. —Photo by Doug Phillips, Bruce Pryor collection
U.S.A. 7651 went in service at Skagway in December 1943 and at the end of the War became White Pass & Yukon Route 3:3 (the third locomotive with this number). The locomotive was painted black with “White Pass” and the number “3” in white. Sometime between 1959 and 1962, no. 3 (3rd) received a unique yellow and green paint scheme. The locomotive seems to have been the Skagway switcher as well as the Shops’ switcher. Fire once again destroyed the Skagway roundhouse on October 15, 1969. The fire was so hot that the locomotives’ window glass melted “like plastic.” The roundhouse burned to the ground in ninety minutes consuming the “three-spot,” steam locomotive 72, and two of the brand new Alco DL-535 engines. The Plymouth was scrapped a few months later in 1970…
