Tanana Valley Railroad
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The Tanana Valley Railroad (tyrR) is a former railroad in Alaska ( United States ). It existed as an independent company from 1904 to 1917.
history
After gold was found around 1900 in the areas around what is now Fairbanks and north of there, numerous miners and workers moved to the area. Businessmen from Dawson (Yukon Territory) planned to build a railroad from the port of Chena on the Tanana River to the prospecting areas to ensure the transport of people and natural resources . To this end, they founded the Tanana Mines Railway in 1904, which was reorganized as the Tanana Valley Railroad on December 12, 1906 .
Construction of some railway systems in Chena had already started in the summer of 1904. Due to the unexpectedly swampy nature of the ground and the resulting difficulties in building the route, work soon came to a standstill. On July 4, 1905, the first steam locomotive on the railway (No. 1) arrived in Chena by ship. Until then, the materials had to be brought to the end of the route by horse and cart.
On July 17, 1905, the first section of the line from Chena to Fairbanks was opened. The track width was 914 mm (3 feet). Immediately afterwards, construction of the route towards Chatanika was continued. Gilmore was reached in September of that year . After the reorganization in TVRR, the extension from Gilmore to Chatanika began immediately, which was completed on September 29, 1907.
At the end of the 1909/10 financial year, the railway company had four locomotives, four passenger cars and 26 freight cars.
The railway ran smoothly and profitably until around 1910. From this time on, however, more and more transports were shifted to the road and the number of transports fell. The port in Chena quickly lost its importance and in 1915 the railway to Chena was stopped. Finally, the Alaska Engineering Commission took over on December 31, 1917. She was in the process of building the standard gauge Fairbanks – Seward line, but had to do with it for several years due to several pending bridges. So instead they built a new line to Nenana by November 7, 1919, which branched off from the TVRR line in Happy . This should later become part of the main line. Initially, the narrow gauge was used, but the line was switched to standard gauge by early June 1923 after the rest of the line was completed. A third rail was installed between Happy and Fairbanks .
The operation between Fairbanks and Chatanika could be maintained until August 1, 1930. In 1931 the line was dismantled. This ended the narrow-gauge railway operations in Fairbanks.
Sources and further information
- Individual evidence
- ↑ Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. Pacific Northwest. SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 1998.
- ^ Poor's Manual of Railroads, 44th Annual Number. Poor's Railroad Manual Co., 1911, p. 1396.
- literature
- Howard Clifford: Alaska / Yukon Railroads. An illustrated History. Oso Publishing, Arlington WA 1999, ISBN 0-9647521-4-X .
- Web links
- History of tyrR (English)