(Click on any of the small photos to see the large photo and caption)
Story By MARY FENNO
The old sourdough rested at Alaskaland.
Siderailed by stiff joints, pocked with age spots and with no job to do, it was just a matter of time before the pioneer wasted away.
But old No. 1, the first steam locomotive in Canada's Yukon Territory and Fairbanks, has been derailed from destruction by the group, Friends of the Tanana Valley Railroad.
The brigade of train lovers formed to save the tank engine built in 1899 by the Porter Locomotive Works in Pittsburgh, Pa. Welded together by their love of history, machines, choo-choos and Alaska, the all-volunteer force has taken the 7-ton workhorse out of retirement and plans to have it ready to steam around Alaskaland in 1999, the engine's centennial.
Steam engines, fired by wood and water, headed the area's first mechanized, reliable transportation system used to shuttle local miners to and from their claims. No. 1 was the backbone engine that was used to construct the lines and then one of four locomotives that ran the rails. The hills and valleys around Fairbanks echoed with train whistles and the clickity-clack of solid steel wheels as the trains made their runs to Fox, Gilmore, Chatanika, Chena, Eldorado and other small mining towns that marked the routes.
Some of the ties, bridges and trestles the engines used are still visible where the rail bed was laid. Rusted pieces of track and squat slabs of rotten wood are hidden in the weeds and brush near the town sites and stations supported by the miners.
Thickets of alder, birch and spruce cover the hillsides that were stripped of trees for fuel during the railroad's golden days. Eventually what began as the Tanana Mines Railway in 1905, evolved into the Tanana Valley Railroad in 1907 and was sold to the Alaska Engineering Commission in 1917. The line was operated by the commission until 1923, when it became the property of the Alaska Railroad.
Many of the town sites are still populated but with few gold miners. The Chena Junction station was right in the middle of what is now the University of Alaska's Agricultural and Forestry Experimental Station. Although the community of Fox is alive and well, others have disappeared. The town of Chena, Fairbanks' chief competitor during the gold rush, stood where the Chena River wayside is off of Chena Pump Road. Pieces of rail and old bridges are hidden in the woods off Ballaine Road. Chatanika Roadhouse on the Steese Highway is across from the old road that leads to the crumbling remains of the town. Near the Steese Highway is the old dredge and miners still labor in the area.
The Friends of the Tanana Valley Railroad are still laboring on old No. 1. Dan Gullickson, the group's president, along with other members, has spent countless hours at a fenced-off area in Alaskaland working on the project. Before the revival, the engine had sat for 66 years, still and silent, a shadow of the powerhouse it had once been.
Retired in 1922, the pioneer was given a place of honor near the railroad station downtown. Cordoned off with chains and white posts, No. 1 quickly became an antique, outdated by technology and the subject of postcards. Time passed and the engine languished in the parking lot in front of Samson Hardware and the International Hotel, now the Big I bar. Mining communities died out, the Tanana Valley Railroad closed and diesel power replaced steam. Tall grass and fireweed grew over the manicured patch of lawn surrounding the engine that was going in only one direction--downhill, Gullickson said.
"People and kids liked to ring the bell, until it got stolen," he said. "The smokestack was full of junk from people who would start a fire to watch the smoke come out of the chimney. It went through at least three floods and that aged it considerably."
The engine was moved for Alaska's centennial celebration to the park that became Alaskaland in 1967. There it sat across from the tracks of the Crooked Creek & Whiskey Island Railroad for over two decades. Children climbed on it, tourists photographed it but a century of work and weather had taken a toll on the old-timer.
Gullickson first read about the area's railroad history while researching a project in Nome. When he returned to Fairbanks he went to Alaskaland and examined the old engine. It wasn't much to look at by then--the water tank was rusted out, it needed a coat of paint and the bell was missing--again.
The engine's fate surfaced again when another train buff, Russ Green, gave him the name of a company that makes a G gauge model of the same design as old No. 1. Building the smaller model was the incentive behind rebuilding the original, he said.
"That's when we made the mistake," he laughed. "Russ said, `you know, we ought to do something about the engine at Alaskaland.' I agreed and we founded the group with about 15 members."
That was in 1991 and since being rescued from certain demise, the engine has been undergoing a complete overhaul. On a recent Saturday, Richard Barlow and Jon Holmgren, two of the group's members, directed a forklift as it loaded one of the engine's heavy axles with two rear driving wheels to be taken to the old Fairbanks Exploration Co.'s machine shop for work. The shop, now owned by John Reeves and renamed the Dan Eagan Machine Shop, has one of the few metal-turning lathes that can hold the large piece, Holmgren explained.
"The axles have to be cleaned up and turned so we don't prematurely wear out our brand new bearings," he said. "Everything has to be clean and even before we put the undercarriage back together again."
Once the axle was unloaded at the shop, Holmgren found the lathe could accommodate it, but he needed to make an adapter to mount the axle on the lathe. The challenges are what makes the project interesting, he said.
"I'm not a train buff, but I have always had a fascination with making and fixing things," he said. "I saw them taking this apart and I thought it would be a great project to be involved in."
Barlow traces his fascination with trains back to childhood. For him, what's appealing about the engine and all trains are the sounds and designs. Unlike modern engines whose parts are hidden, the working parts of old trains are on the outside where you can see them work, he said.
"You can see the blocks rock as the thing moves. The valves open and close and the sounds change," he said. "Modern locomotives sound the same with or without a load, but a steam locomotive sounds different when it has a load on. It's very simple and at the same time it's very complex."
The magnitude of the work was illustrated even before the restoration began. To proceed, the group had to find the original blueprints for the engine. The factory, that turned the engines out like Ford's Model T cars in the later part of the last century, had closed several decades ago.
A search through ancient paperwork for the plans was expedited with the help of the California State Railroad Museum at Sacramento. The hunt traced the prints to a Canadian collector who had donated the prints to the government, which in turn had given them to a museum in Toronto. Microfilm copies were shipped to Alaska with the help of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Archives. The only hitch was the blueprints were not organized when photographed so each one of the microfilms had to be viewed before the various plans for engine No. 1 were found and identified. Once that was done, the hands-on work began.
The boiler was the biggest challenge. Holes were cut into it and the pipes removed to get a view of the inside. The inspection showed the metal had aged and while it could be repaired, the limitations would be substantial. The group opted to have a replica of the boiler built using some of the parts from the old boiler, Gullickson said.
"We couldn't risk a boiler explosion," he said. "Even if it had passed the pressure test, it would've required a boiler inspection on a weekly basis. That would mean to operate it we would have to take it apart and reassemble it every week."
After much searching and trial and error, the group settled on a Rhode Island company that is currently doing the boiler work. It should--if everything goes well--be finished on time, Gullickson said.
"We're still on schedule for 1999," he said. "We need a cabinet maker to refinish the carriage house and there's other things, but we don't have an indoor place to work so we're limited to working when we can and when the weather cooperates."
Once the engine is restored and engineers have been trained to run it, the group will concentrate on building a working railroad museum at Alaskaland. The building will house the engines and cars of the park's railroad, have a maintenance pit and give people a chance to watch and work on the railroad. The design is already finished; what is needed is money and volunteers to help preserve this unique heritage, Gullickson said.
"We were given an old 1916 wooden Alaska Engineering Commission caboose three weeks ago and we couldn't take it--there is no place to put it or work on it," he said. "There's a lot of stuff like that. It's our history and it's slipping away. Where will old No. 1 be stored if we don't build? If we leave it sitting outside, how long do you think it will be before the bell disappears again?"
The project has found support through the bed tax grants, individuals and businesses. Pieces of the railroad tracks, engineer hats, T-shirts and a portion of the proceeds from Nicholas Deely's book, "Tanana Valley Railroad, the Gold Dust Line," are sold at Alaskaland and help defray the costs of the project. Donations of $100-a-gallon paint for the undercarriage, a shop to do some of the machine work, glass and other materials have helped tremendously, he said.
When the pioneer engine rides the rails again it will span three centuries of history--quite an accomplishment, Gullickson said.
"This is the oldest gold rush relic in Fairbanks. It was working before the town was established. The Riverboat Nenana is a Johnny-come-lately compared to old No. 1."
Mary Fenno is a local free-lance writer.
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This article was originally printed by the Fairbanks News-Miner in their Heartland section on August 17, 1997.