We boarded the train for the 10 hour trip to Denali. We were assigned to the last car, which was very comfortable. The upper level of the cars is completely glass-enclosed (known as Ultra Domes). The train has a full service dining car. The train slowly departed Whittier at 8:15 am. As we left we entered into a long tunnel.
The railroad was born on March 12, 1914, when the US Congress passed the Alaska Railroad Act, authorizing the US President to construct and operate the line. The estimated construction cost was $35 million. When the Alaska Engineering Commission set up camp on the muddy banks of Ship Creek in 1915 to begin surveying the line, Anchorage was born. It took eight years and 4500 men to build a 470-mile railroad from the ice-free port of Seward to the boomtown of Fairbanks. On Sunday afternoon in 1923, President Warren Harding, the first US president to visit Alaska, tapped in the golden spike at Nenana and then immediately pounded in its iron replacement. The Alaska Railroad has been running ever since. Within 15 years it was making a profit. 70 years after the route was chosen, the federal government transferred the Alaska Railroad to the State of Alaska.
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