The rest of the trip to Skagway was completed under adverse north coast weather conditions so one did not go out on deck very often. It seemed as though every town and village on the Alaska panhandle we visited during the night, so there was not that much to see. Bearing in mind that it was still early spring and we were going north as well, so, the days were not all that long. It was never the less a great ferry trip! After stopping at Haines Alaska, it was a matter of making a hard starboard (right) turn and head down the Lynn Canal to Skagway where we disembarked the ferry at about noon. The bus that normally meets the ferry was broken down that day so it was a case of all the ferry passengers carrying their suitcases along a rather muddy road to the downtown area. In 1982 the roads of Skagway had not yet been paved which added immensely to the charm of this funky “far west, up north” town.

We found our hotel, The Skagway Inn, eleven blocks down Broadway, the main street of the town. It was a very old wooden structure that appeared as though it had been added to once or twice or so during it’s lifetime. The wooden structure sort of rambled all over the property. After signing in, we found our room on the second floor. The rooms were not numbered, but each was named after one of the girls who frequented the establishment almost a hundred years before. Even the locks on the doors were the original old type with porcelain knobs and the steel skeleton-type keys. The bed was an original brass four poster! As I mentioned earlier the hotel had been added to so many times over the years the building had developed a sort of north-south list. The common bathroom was at one end of the hallway. The “down” end from our room. If one had to use the washroom in the middle of the night, you were sort of forced to run down the hallway to get there and you almost needed climbing gear complete with spike boots to climb uphill back to your room .All in fun. The hotel was spotlessly clean, it was totally different and we called it home for two days and nights.

Unlike summertime, during the winter and early spring there are very few people in Skagway. As we were very much out of season tourists, we stood out like a couple of sore thumbs. We were the only two tourists in town. Everywhere we went the locals gave us very strange looks! Having located the one open eatery in town, “The Northern Lights Café”, on Broadway, and after having a couple of super great home cooked meals, the locals sort of eased up a bit after they found out who we were and where we were from. Two establishments in Skagway that are a must see. One is the photo shop, “Dedmans”. No kidding, that’s the name! The other is the museum. One could easily spend a couple of days at the museum. Dedmans is a very historic photo shop in it’s own right. The original owner, Mr.Dedman was a professional photographer during the Klondike era and in 1982, the shop was still owned by his offspring. They have thousands of the original “Dedman” pictures in the shop and for a nominal cost they will quite cheerfully make copies of as many as you want, including historic pictures of the W.P.&Y. R.R.

It seems as though when the White Pass And Yukon Railway went out of the LCL business, they had a whole mess of box cars to get rid of, less running gear. Guess what? They make great tool sheds! Almost every home in Skagway it seems had a W.P.& Y. boxcar in the backyard! A very practical idea.

The morning of the third day, it was off to the W.P&Y. office on the waterfront to pickup our train tickets, and say “farewell” to Skagway. We climbed aboard a combination caboose that was connected to a string of empty ore cars that were headed back up “the big hill”. Laura and myself, one other man and four, middle aged sisters that continually fought and bickered among themselves all the way to Whitehorse were the complete passenger list. The conductor rode the copula. The trip, of course, was spectacular to say the least. There were five of the GE shovel nose diesels on the head end to pull a fairly lengthy train up the hill where the three lead units would be wyed at Lake Bennett to be used as extra brakes for taking the next west bound loaded ore train down the big hill to Skagway. At Douglas we passed a section gang that were all standing around waiting for us to pass. At the same time we were passing through Douglas, a fairly serious early spring snow- storm was developing. As we began the decent to Lake Bennett, the snow stopped, the sun appeared and the rest of the day was a glorious spring day. We stopped on the main line. We were now parked on a fairly stiff down hill grade in to the west end of the Lake Bennett yard limits to cut the three lead units off the train prior to them being wyed. The back door of the combination car was open, the sunshine was streaming in the open door and there was riverlets of melt water running everywhere. A glorious spring day!

All of a sudden, I could hear a very strange metal-on-metal squealing sound behind me getting louder and louder as it got closer to our stopped train. I was sitting with my back to the opened back door. Laura was sitting opposite to me looking out the door. Her eyes were getting bigger and bigger by the minute as this horrible howling noise got closer and closer, louder and louder! Then it happened! Just as she opened her mouth to scream there was a terrific crash behind me that lifted the rear set of wheels of the combination car actually off the rails for a second and set them back on the rails again! Wow!

Let’s go back a bit. Remember the section gang at Douglas? Well, it seems as though they finished up what ever they were doing and were riding their motorized speeder back to Lake Bennett for lunch. As I mentioned earlier it is a fairly steep downhill grade from Douglas in to the Lake Bennett yard limits. The rails were very wet due to the melting snow. The section foreman was traveling too fast under the circumstances and the speeder, they claim, was doing about forty m.p.h when it hit the knuckle coupler of our coach. The sound we could hear was that of the wheels locked up tight, with brakes full on sliding down hill on wet steel rails. At the last minute the section crew abandoned ship in to the nearest snow banks just as the speeder hit us! Just to make things interesting, the gas engine on the speeder did not have a fuel pump. So, the five- gallon can that was plumbed directly to the carburetor of the silly thing was mounted on top of the radiator! Dead match for the knuckle coupler on our car. BANG! There was gasoline everywhere. The knuckle coupler went right through the gas can. The remains of the speeder were fairly evenly distributed in the general area of the rear of our coach. Remember? The door of the combination car was open at the moment of impact. Why there was not so much as one spark generated when impact was made, I will never know. We should have all been cooked alive by a fireball of gasoline rolling through the open door of the combination car!

While us shaken up travelers had “moose stew” at the station for lunch, the section foreman received a rather severe dressing down in the dispatch office from the roadmaster who just happened to be “in town” that day. The boss was rather upset, to say the least! The section foreman was standing there absorbing the wrath of the roadmaster, all the time his left arm that received a fairly decent laceration when he jumped from the speeder, was bleeding, drip, drip on the dispatch office floor. I could to see the whole performance from the dining area.

The rest of the trip to Whitehorse was uneventful. It was a glorious spring day in the Yukon and I will never forget the trip. As we were the only Canadians on the train we had to remain in the combination car after we arrived in Whitehorse, for Customs inspection. The rest of the train was disconnected and moved away. So, there we sat with the coach to ourselves in front of the Whitehorse station waiting for over an hour for Canada Customs to arrive on the scene. A very pleasant Customs officer finally showed up. But it was sort of like being under arrest in your own country for no reason at all. I don’t know why Canada Customs could not have been notified earlier as to our pending arrival so they could have met the train.

The highlight for us in Whitehorse happened the following morning when we showed up at the W.P.& Y. office at the station. I asked the ticket agent if there was any chance of seeing “73” which at the time was stored in a shed awaiting restoration. A very obliging chap. “Sure”, he said. “I’ll get the keys to the boss’s pick up.” My immediate reaction was. “Where the heck is this thing stored?” It became very apparent, very quickly the reason for the pickup truck. Spring time in the Yukon! The whole rail yard was a muddy quagmire. It was only about two hundred yards to the locomotive shed. Without the pick up truck, walking the distance would have been next to impossible.

We spent the next two days wandering around Whitehorse soaking up the scenery. On the morning of the second day we dropped in to Murdoch’s Gem Shop on Main Street. Fascinating place. While we were there, a very small man came in to the shop. He had the complexion of a raisin! Small as he was, He was still a tough looking hombre. Dressed in rags that he had probably lived in 24-7 for weeks. He looked as though he had just climbed out of a hole in the ground somewhere, and he had probably done just that. He walked up to a counter directly opposite to where Laura and I were standing where a set of balance scales sat patiently waiting for the next gold miner to come through the door. The miner reached in to his pocket and hauled out his poke of gold. He dumped the contents of the poke on the balance scale, all the while the clerk watched the procedure with hawk-like-eyes! The gold was weighed. The two parties agreed on the weight and the clerk gave the Klondiker a chit of some kind authenticating the amount of gold received. Hardly a word was spoken between the two individuals. The miner then disappeared in to the streets of Whitehorse, along with his chit! I believe he would take the chit to the bank, where they would square up with him for the required cash. He received no cash at Murdoch’s. The clerk we were dealing with told us that they really had no idea as to who the Klondiker was. They had no idea as to where his claim was, and I would imagine that he would not be in too much of a hurry to tell one where it was either. A very interesting transaction, and a very interesting character making the transaction.

Next stop, Prince George. No rails between Whitehorse and Prince George so we traveled Canadian Pacific Airlines. Remember them? We arrived in Prince George a couple of hours late as I recall. Mid flight we were diverted to Yellowknife to pick up passengers that had been stranded earlier in the day when their regular scheduled flight could not make a landing due to weather problems. We managed to get a few hours sleep in Prince George before climbing aboard VIA #5 headed home to Prince Rupert. The rail trip between Prince George and Prince Rupert is totally spectacular at any time of the year. The reason for this is partly because between Prince George and Vanderhoof, rails and road are independent of each other while the rails following the Nechako River. Between Skeena Crossing and Terrace, the highway is on one side of the river while railway follows the opposite side. We have traveled VIA #5 and #6 between Prince Rupert and Jasper many, many times. This is a fabulous four-day return trip. We have had a few interesting things happen to us on this trip. Perhaps in a future article we will delve in to this .We arrived at Prince Rupert at 2000 hrs, the regular scheduled time, that night. Hailed a taxi at the train station and went home. It was an awesome “two-gauge” ten-day holiday.