I realized after the fact that the following post probably belongs in this forum, rather than in the General Discussion forum, so here it is again:
I’m interested in Seattle’s Harbor Island as a possible location to model, and I’m hoping someone can provide information about the history of rail service on the island as well as insight into current operations. I’m considering both the present day and the early 70’s as potential modeling periods (you can weigh in on which period I should focus on in my other thread, "Which rainbow fleet would you model?).
The photo below, taken last summer, shows the yard on the west side of the island which is shared by BNSF and UP. BNSF uses the west half of the yard, while the UP restricts its operation to the east side. One function of the yard is to serve as a marshalling area for the weekly rail barge to Alaska, which is switched by the UP. Tax parcel maps show that the yard was once owned by the Milwaukee road.
Can you provide any information about operations on the Island today and around the time of the BN merger? Can you recommend a good reference work on rail operations in the Seattle area in the early 70’s? Any help would be appreciated.
If my memory hasn’t failed me having grown up in Seattle I remember only seeing NP switchers on Harbor Island. They could also be seen at the Steel plant just west of Harbor Island as well. To the east of Harbor Island was a large yard complex served by Milwaukee Road, UP and NP with GN to a lesser extent. Milwaukee loaded rail barges along West Marginal Way for the Olympic Peninsula. Never witnessed the Alaska barges being loaded so don’t know who switched these in Seattle. Was quite common to see ARR freight cars along West Marginal way so may have been Milwaukee loading those barges. At that time a ship operating out of Vancouver carried railcars to Alaska as well. I had left Seattle before the BN merger so anything after that would be speculation.
Interesting yard… and look at that rail - CWR in a yard, no less!
You may want to check out http://www.mrha.com - the Milwaukee Road Historical Association’s back issues of their quarterly magazine The Milwaukee Railroader. I think they had an article on the Seattle operations of the Milwaukee in their Along the Milwaukee Way series.
I should have said East Marginal Way not West Marginal Way. Also one of the more interesting operations just west of Harbor Island along the West Waterway during the 1950’s and 1960’s was the United Fruit Company Banana Boats that served Seattle on a schedule you could set your watch by. The boats arrived Sunday afternoon and the stalks of Banana’s began unloading then using rubber sling conveyors that went into the holds and stevedores loaded the belts with the heavy stalks and the ships sailed on tuesdays. At the same time the NP spotted about four dozen reefers for loading along side the pier for markets in Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Chicago where most of the cars went. Eventually all of this business went to refrigerated trucks and now is fully containerized. The beutiful United Fruit Company ships also carried passengers at that time but when the Bananas became containerized the ships went to scrap. I worked a couple of summers for a tour boat company in Seattle and got to see much of the operations around Seattle’s waterfront but remember this one specifically as it was not unusual to see large bunches of Banana’s floating in the west waterway wi
Harbor Island was completely rebuilt sometime around the late 90s or so. Before that, the BN/BNSF had a yard on the west side of the island and the UP had a yard on the east side. The UP yard was eliminated when the Port of Seattle expanded the container terminal there.
