From miles 49 to 56, the line follows the west side hill through Abercrombie Canyon to Baird Glacier. Construction here involved heavy rockwork in the sides of the cliffs, heavy snowshed work and a torturous alignment. . . . There are also in this stretch six snowsheds, about 83 per cent to the total of 4,097 feet on the entire line. There are frequent and expensive earth and loose rock slides.A steam shovel (possibly X33) clearing away what appears to be a rock slide in Abercrombie Canyon:
A snowshed in the canyon, location otherwise not specfied:
A low unfilled trestle at mile 50-51:
Rapids at mile 52:
A snowshed also at mile 52:
A slide at mile 53:
A photo from the 1913 Alaska Railroad Commission report:
A salmon saltery and showshed at mile 54:
Looking closely at an enlarged version of the photo, there appears to be a loading platform at the saltery. This means that at least in earlier years, this was an active shipper on the CR&NW, one of the few other than the Kennecott mill.
Bridge 54B:
Some structures, otherwise unidentified, and a loco with train are to the north in the photo.
A cut at mile 55, which looks like the same rockwork visible in the distance just above:
There was a sizable cannery operation at Abercrombie Rapids Landing until some time in the 1920s when the Territory of Alaska outlawed the kind of fish trapping that made that business possible. By the late 1920s, it had been completely removed. In my interviews with a man who worked on the line for the last 10 years of its existence, he told me he had never seen the cannery at Rapids Landing.
ReplyDelete