Folks,
During the last week of April, I traveled to the remote town of Skagway, Alaska to witness something that's become pretty rare these days: a steam-powered, rotary plow train. The White Pass & Yukon folks brought out all of their steam equipment for the dual purposes of clearing their line for the 2011 tourist season, and documenting the procedures so that the next generation of WP&YR crews can do it again in the future. The railroad offered a chartered chase train for people like myself who wanted to document this event, and a total of 17 photographers, including our friend, Matthew Malkiewicz made the trip to Alaska to do just that.
This was a high-risk trip for all of us, as poor snow conditions and/or mechanical issues could have easily spoiled the fun....but no such problems were encountered. The event ran four days, during which we saw all kinds of weather conditions, ranging from snow, to bright sun. Snow depths at White Pass were in the 10-20 ft. range, making for a hard struggle....and requiring some assistance from Caterpillar Bulldozers. The WP&YR crews ran the 100-year-old equipment as hard as it ever did back in the day, and to their credit and the credit of the shop crews, absolutely no mechanical problems were encountered. The railroad even brought back several retired guys, including 75-year-old, Rotary Pilot, Alvin Gordon to ensure that all possible expertise was on hand to conduct the operation and "write the book" for future events.
Without exception, all of the folks who attended the 2011 Rotary Event were delighted with the experience. The folks at the White Pass & Yukon Route treated us extraordinarily well, making every possible effort to ensure that we had a good time. In fact, we all demanded first right of refusal if they ever do it again!

Here are a few of my shots from the event. I will be adding more as time goes on. Hope you enjoy seeing this operation as much as I enjoyed photographing it!
http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php?offset=0&where=search|-2|-2|-2||-2|White%20Pass|5|3||||||||-2|-2||-2|-2|||5|-2|25775||||||7||1||||&newdisplay=2/Kevin