Proposal made to extend railroad from North Pole to Delta Junction The Associated Press Published: December 27th, 2008 11:14 PM Last Modified: December 27th, 2008 11:14 PM FAIRBANKS -- A federal transportation board is seeking comments on a proposal to extend the Alaska Railroad track from North Pole to Delta Junction.The state-owned railroad already has laid out plans for its proposed 80-mile extension, which includes building a bridge. The federal Surface Transportation Board this month issued a draft environmental impact statement on the roughly $700 million project, and is seeking input before Feb. 2. The proposed project aims to add commercial and passenger railroad service southeast of Eielson Air Force Base. Right now, the most common method of getting commercial freight from the Fairbanks area to Valdez or Delta Junction is by truck.
Would be nice to see them extend into Fairbanks, even if only to North Pole for now. I'm sure the USAF would be happy as well as Eielson is a major base for them and having rail close by will help them with moving large equipment to and from the base during Red Flag - Alaska without having to call in transports which are already in heavy use for logistics missions of our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When I lived in AK, left there in 2001, they had just got the SD70MACs and the last one was named Spirit of Delta Junction, which wasn't a point on the railroad...they've been talking about this extension which would connect to Canadian railroads somewhere in British Colombia or Yukon Territory since before that. But looks like we might actually see it happen.
What ever happened to the plans to bring the railroad down through Canada to the lower 48? It was hot news for awhile a few years ago, but then it died out.
