The latest Trains mag had an article about Alaska wanting to extend its railroad 80-miles further and that sparked a question about what is the furthest north that a North American railroad reaches. How far north do Canadian rails reach?
What about abandoned N. American rail lines north?
On the bottom side of the question- what and where are the current most remote and furthest south that U.S. rails reach without crossing into Mexico?
What about abandoned U.S.rail lines south?
Thanks,
Road Fan
I believe the current northernmost point is Fort St. John on Canadian National by a slight margin over the Alaska RR. formerly it was Hay River on CN’s Great Slave Lake extension.
Southern most would be somewhere on the tourist railroad Lahaina, Kaanapali & Pacific, on the island of Maui in Hawaii. There were in the past several sugar cane railroads on the big island of Hawaii that would be a bit further south.
The Alaska RR in Fairbanks is further north than any RR in Canada.
http://alaskacanadarail.com has a good map showing the relative locations of existing Alaska and Canadian routes.
If Fort Nelson, BC shown on the map in the link and and Hay River, NWT are both on lines no longer served by CN then the northernmost point served by direct rail link with the rest of North America is Churchill, Manitoba on the Hudson’s Bay Railway, a former CN line. It’s latitude is slightly more North than Fort St. John, BC. If there is still rail service to Fort Nelson, BC then that is the most northerly spot
I had to dig out an old wall map from my high school days to figure that one out.[(-D]
AgentKid
I got all 21st Century high-tech and used Wikipedia to look up the actual latitudes of the northern points mentioned in the above posts
Hay River, NWT: 60 degrees 49 minutes 59 seconds
Fort Nelson, BC: 58 degrees 48 minutes 21 seconds
Churchill, MB: 58 degrees 46 minutes 9 seconds
Fort St. John, BC: 56 degrees 24 minutes
Skagway, AK: 59 degrees 28 minutes 7 seconds (southern terminal of White Pass & Yukon Railroad)
Anchorage, AK: 61 degrees 13 minutes 6 seconds (southern terminal??? of Alaska Railroad)
High School refresher, the higher the number of degrees, the more northerly it is.
AgentKid
According to my atlas, there is/was a rail line to the southern shore of the Great Slave Lake. It is at Pine Point, a bit east of Hay River.
-Crandell
Pine Point, NWT: 60 degrees 50 minutes
Wikipedia says the mine that was the sole reason for the town’s existance was closed in 1988. Everything was removed except the streets.
AgentKid
.
And Fairbanks, AK is at 64 degrees, so that makes it the furthest north in North America. Actually Dome, AK is very slightly further north.
Been to Dome many times. Saw the best aurora borealis display of my life there.
The farthest north railway I’ve set foot on, now abandoned, is the Council City and Solomon River Railway, at 64-30 north. It’s three 0-4-4 Forneys (ex NYC elevated railways!) and a lot of cars sit abandoned on the tundra 20 miles east of Nome, Alaska.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2004343368_tr_nomealaska13.html
I’ll have to look at the maps, but I think the Nome narrow-gauge lines actually got a little farther north than the CC&SR.
RWM
As far as integrated North American (apart from Mexico) rail access is concerned, CN’s line to Hay River, NWT is still the furthest northern point and FEC’s line south of Miami the furthest south followed closely, if not equally, by UP to Brownsville. The Alaska RR is landlocked, captive to Alaska and has little relevance to the rest of the continent for shipping.
The Alaska Railroad is kind of unique becasue it isn;t connected to any other railroad as I recall so the question might be a two parter with the Alska winning the distance question but which is the fartest north that I could get to by train from Chicago?
As far as the southern most I would have to think it was the Flager line to Key West Florida.
What’s really shocking is that the travel writer of the article in the Seattle Times link that RWM posted above - date-lined as “Originally published on Sunday, April 13, 2008” - knew and cared enough to insert the following into the article:
“(A technical note: all three locomotives are 23-ton 0-4-4 Forney-type steamers).”
The article also states that enough rail for 51 miles of line was delivered, and 35 miles was laid. So even as far north as this one was, it got farther along than many “paper” (only) railroads farther to the south.
If you are a passenger, you would go north from Chicago to Winnipeg, Manitoba and then take the VIA train shown on this weeks Photo Of The Week on the TRAINS homepage to Churchill, MB on the shore of Hudson Bay.
It you had something to be shipped, it seems the consensus here that CN still has service to Hay River NWT. If you shipped CN, again your load would go to Winnipeg, then to Edmonton,AB and then north to Hay River. If that service does not still run, then the most northerly point you could ship to by rail only, would be Churchill. I think that should cover it.
AgentKid
I recall seeing several photos of those Forney’s rusting away on the tundra in the now out of print, Oso publication: Tall Timbers & Short Lines- that issue did a good job coverning Forney and his locomotives.
Several seasons ago, in Trains magazine I believe, there was talk of pushing north to connect BC Rails (or the other 2 Canadian roads, I can’t remember) to Alaska’s railroads. Anyone hear anymore of that idea.
Happy Rails,
Road Fan
That route is shown in the map that is linked to the link AlienKing posted above. It is the potential route from Minaret to Dease Lake. It was curtailed during some economic downturn in the 70’s or 80’s and never resumed.
AgentKid
I recall that was advocated by the now-deposed Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. I believe there may have been a website or report about it on-line, but that was about it. A little research turned up these 2 links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Railroad - see the “Proposed Expansion” about in the midddle of this page.
http://www.alaskacanadarail.org/news.html - says a feasibility study was released on June 19, 2007.
.
According to the CN website they still go to , NWT.
The Dease Lake Extension of BC Rail was rumored to be the start of a connection with Alaska RR. As said previously it was never completed. Today it extends from to Chipmunk as the Takla Sub. This is maintained to industrial standards to serve several timber industries. This info is a couple of years old, so I do not know if it in current use. One of the forest industries in has closed in the last year / year and half. With the down turn of the North American economy much of the BC timber industry is idle.
What’s the most Northern is all in the definition.
CN if connected to the rest of the net work.
ARR wins as it does go way north to the land of the midnight sun.
One of the abandoned narrow gauges of would win but they never lasted long and only ran from a mine to the coast.
If you loaded a box car in Chicago you could ship it to Fairbanks. The Alaska RR may not have a physical rail connection, but there is marine service that shuttles cars to and from Alaska.
Jeff