Western Railroad Discussion > Tunnels Anyone ?

This is the old west side tunnel portal on Stampede Pass in July of 1996.
The snow shed has long been burned down, but the old fans for ventilation are still there.
If only there was a couple of NP SD45 coming out of that hole!

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Here is the old power sub station that was used for the fans. The creek ran through the concert structure and into a concert culvert under the track to the other side.
You will see a different shot here in another picture in this thread.

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Here is tunnel # 4’s west side where the start of the double track down the west side of the mountain. The old signal bridge has long been striped of its semaphores! Man I would have loved to have work on them!

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Construction of the new snow shed on the west side of Stampede tunnel.
They did not replace the old fan units that the NP put in for ventilation.
The old power sub station is still standing at this time.
This picture was taken in November of 1996.
In the future I have more but on the east side, but I’ll have to find them.
Enjoy!

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Here are a few shots of Tunnel 4 shown in the background of the 3rd photo taken thirteen years apart. First is a BN westbound detour train with SD40 6304 leading on 8-25-85.

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And this is a shot in the BNSF era taken 6-6-98 of another westbound at the same location.

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Very intresting. Great documentation. Over the years, it seems like the west portal has been much less photographed than the east portal. In NP days there are many pictures around Martin and the east portal (especially by Jim Fredrickson), but I don't remember seeing any west portal or Stampede tunnel pictures even by him (many on both sides of tunnel 4, of course).

John

Very nice addition to my thread Brian! Thanks for sharing your photos. Nice shots, bet ya waited all day for that second shot? Even with a lineup, it hard to catch a train up there!
Have a safe day, Out!

Well, I actually had 2 westbounds to chase that afternoon. This was the 2nd section of the PASTAC. At the time the PASTAC was being broken into two sections at Ellensburg with the road power taking the first cut over to Lester or Kanaskat. The second cut was right behind with "Helpers" that were stationed out of Ellensburg or Kanaskat. This day it had 4 SD40-2's. After crossing Stampede the train was reassembled and went on with the road power. The "Helpers" would normally wait at Kanaskat or Lester for the EVEPAS and do it all over again eastbound back to Ellensburg.

So this day I shot the ATSF 937 West (1st cut PASTAC) at Martin at 5:20pm (followed it out out Ellensburg) and the BN 8020 West (2nd cut PASTAC) at Tunnel 4 at 6:25pm, my wait being about 15 minutes! My notes say both sections met the EVEPAS (BN 8118 East) at Lester so I would guess the westbound was put back together there and the eastbound taken over the hill in 2 sections. DPU did away with all of that though.

No rails, must be part of a new alignment. great pics. its really hard to fan in that country due to lack of trains. spent two weeks there last june and only heard or seen about 20 trains. see more train action in Coos Bay. he he

They pulled all the rial out of the tunnel in order to rebuild the drainage system and the snow shed!

Santa Fe 8212 East at west end Cliff at dusk.
JB

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Hi there,

Here's the Alaska Railroad Whittier Tunnel. It was converted to car/rail use 2 years ago. If you look in the photo closely you'll see the headlights of a car getting ready to come out. The rails that go out to the left is a derail feature, so supposedly a train can't enter in the tunnel is in car mode. You can see the train signals are displaying Red over Red.

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Hi there,

Another shot truck waiting on the right, you can see the car traffic signal is red. The outbound traffic board says the tunnel will be open at 4:30.

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