Making tracks across Alaska: extending the Alaska Railroad's reach.

• Author: White, Rindi
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Transportation

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Fewer rail gangs will be out working along the Alaska Railroad this summer, one visible sign the state-run railroad is conserving everywhere it can.

Although the Alaska Railroad is facing a constricted budget, reduced federal funding, and reduced use by two key customers, a busy schedule of capital projects is planned this year.

The Northern Rail Extension project will extend a road--the bed of what will one day be a rail line--to a military training ground near Salcha. The Port MacKenzie Rail project will extend a rail line from the main route near Houston south to the Mat-Su Borough's port. The Railroad is also partnering with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service to build a second cabin as part of its whistle stop service in the Chugach National Forest between Seward and Portage and will be working to complete the Grandview whistle stop this year, one of five whistle stops along the route.

Accessing a Unique Area

Alaska Railroad Corporation spokesman Tim Sullivan says the Northern Rail Extension is a four-phase project that will eventually go from North Pole to Delta Junction, a distance of about eighty miles. When finished it will be open to all shippers and passengers, and is a key part of a much larger project.

"This project is the first step in going all the way to the Canadian border," Sullivan says.

But in the first few phases, the focus is largely on working with the U.S. Department of Defense to allow greater access to a military training area.

The Army and Air Force currently use Joint Pacific Area Range, one of the largest military training complexes in the nation at roughly a million acres, only in the winter because there is no bridge across the Tanana River at Salcha to reach it. With $104 million from the Department of Defense and $84 million from the state of Alaska, the railroad and its contractor, Kiewit, will bridge the Tanana River, build a levee to protect the bridge from seasonal flooding and complete thriteen miles of road. The project should be complete by summer 2014, Sullivan says.

The one-lane road will extend from the Richardson Highway. A reminder of the project's roots, a military staging area will be included immediately south of the river.

Phases 2-4 are not yet funded, Sullivan says. The next phase will lay rail to Salcha at an estimated cost of $130 million. From there, a third phase will extend the route thirty miles, from the west side of the Tanana River crossing to...