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Post by semiahmoo on Dec 14, 2010 1:08:51 GMT -8
How many of these ships carry railcars?
I remember about 20 years ago at least one of these ships loaded/unloaded railcars in Bellingham.
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Post by SS Shasta on Dec 14, 2010 7:53:59 GMT -8
How many of these ships carry railcars? I remember about 20 years ago at least one of these ships loaded/unloaded railcars in Bellingham. Are you thinking of the old Alaska train ship that was once operated by the Alaska Steamship Company? I think it operated between BC ports and the Alaska ports of Seward and Whittier. This service created much conflict because the ship being used for the service was foreign flagged, Liberian I think. No AMHS vessels carry rail cars and there is currently no AMHS service to the port of Seward. Seward is located at the southern end of the Alaska Railroad. If my recall is correct, this train ship was called the Alaska. Rail cars are transported out of Seward/Whittier via barge.
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FNS
Voyager
The Empire Builder train of yesteryear in HO scale
Posts: 4,947
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Post by FNS on Dec 14, 2010 8:56:18 GMT -8
How many of these ships carry railcars? I remember about 20 years ago at least one of these ships loaded/unloaded railcars in Bellingham. Are you thinking of the old Alaska train ship that was once operated by the Alaska Steamship Company? I think it operated between BC ports and the Alaska ports of Seward and Whittier. This service created much conflict because the ship being used for the service was foreign flagged, Liberian I think. No AMHS vessels carry rail cars and there is currently no AMHS service to the port of Seward. Seward is located at the southern end of the Alaska Railroad. If my recall is correct, this train ship was called the Alaska. Rail cars are transported out of Seward/Whittier via barge. Ferries might carry a rail car or two. Classic ones, like cabooses owned by rail buffs, on flatbed trucks, though. Don't forget the model railroad enthusiasts. Cars can pack a load of model rail cars. HO, N, et al.
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Post by Name Omitted on Dec 14, 2010 9:24:44 GMT -8
The Alaska Railroad links to the continental rail system through two maritime links. The in-house system is Alaska Rail Marine, and it connects Whitter with Seattle weekly.
The CN operates the Aqua Train, connecting Whitter with Prince Rupert.
I believe that both are tug and barge, I am not certain.
The White Pass and Yukon have a landing that is not far from the northern ferry terminus in Skagway. The birth they used to unload train cargo onto a ship from is next to the ferry terminal. Interesting point, this port was the first to utilize rail-ship containers, using the Clifford J. Rodgers to transport containers from Whitehorse to Vancouver.
I once was late for the ferry because I was offered a ride in the engine, but had to run back in time to grab the ship. I was on an injured foot at the time, but could not pass that up. It's amazing how fast the Mat's horn can make a boy run.
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mrdot
Voyager
Mr. DOT
Posts: 1,252
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Post by mrdot on Dec 14, 2010 12:01:02 GMT -8
:)yes, Alaska SS. co. ran a trainship which its southern end docked at the end of Anneville slough on the North Delta\Surrey boarder because of the old American Jones act regarding foreign built shipping much the same as the foreign flagged Wickersham had to make other arrangements, for its southbound traffic. I think the RR tracks linked to the old Great Northern line, thru to Seattle. mrdot.
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Post by lmtengs on Dec 14, 2010 15:38:10 GMT -8
CN's Aquatrain is indeed a tug/barge service.
According to what I've heard (inside info), they are considering shutting down the service.
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Post by Low Light Mike on Dec 14, 2010 23:12:07 GMT -8
[housekeeping note: the originator of this thread as been banned from the forum. Making a blatant attack on another member, with profanity, is a 100% for-sure way to make that happen]
Good thread discussion otherwise, so please continue on...
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Post by Name Omitted on Dec 15, 2010 7:48:27 GMT -8
There is a constant discussion (which occasionally gets beyond simple discussion and on to spending money investigating) extending the continental rail system north from Hazelton to Alaska via Carmacks, where a spur would head south to either Haines or (probably more likely since it would pass through Whitehorse) Skagway (on a standard gauge, either bypassing or supplanting the White Pass and Yukon narrow gauge).
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tom98250
Deckhand
Life doesn't get better than this...
Posts: 85
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Post by tom98250 on Dec 15, 2010 12:06:19 GMT -8
Anyone know what ever happened to the Alaska? I remember seeing it mothballed at Lockheed in Seattle for a number of years...
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Post by SS Shasta on Dec 15, 2010 14:08:00 GMT -8
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Post by fargowolf on Dec 15, 2010 17:41:08 GMT -8
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Post by robert on Dec 15, 2010 20:48:59 GMT -8
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Post by Low Light Mike on Dec 15, 2010 21:03:24 GMT -8
Wow! A lot of mis-information on this thread. Perhaps I can help. Welcome (again, if you've been here before. I think that I've seen your blog before). Just wondering what your "Wow!" represents, in terms of specific misinformation. Which items in this here thread got your attention and compelled you to register? Cheers, you live in a wonderful town. :D
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2012 11:17:07 GMT -8
Perhaps I can help you here. I was Chief/2nd Officer on the S.S.Alaska from 1975 to 1978, when she was taken out of service. After some time at her berth in Delta she was towed down to Seattle by a Crowley tug. Crowley Red Stack had operated her since 1974, to take advantage of the North Slope boom. She lay in Seattle for a few years, and was then brought back up to Delta to be converted into a machine-shop barge for the Arctic. I saw her being converted in Delta, and again in Tuktoyuktuk, NWT, where she was waiting for disposal.(see photo) She was sold for scrap and, I believe, was under tow to Taiwan when she broke loose and was swept ashore on an island off Alaska somewhere. She was built in 1959 in Kure, Japan as the "City of New Orleans" for West India Fruit and Steamship Company for the Havana to Florida run. She only completed about 100 trips before Castro took over. By 1961 she was laid up somewhere in the States before Alaska Steamship Line bought her in 1964. I always believed that there were two of these ships, and that one sank in the Atlantic. Alaska Steamship wanted to meet the threat posed by Sea-Land and CPR by purchasing the S.S."City of New Orleans", but was unable to operate the ship itself because of Jones Act restrictions. Eventually an Alaska Steamship subsidiary was established to operate the ship, thus avoiding Jones Act restrictions. Registered under the Liberian flag and renamed Alaska, the ship made 500 round-trips between 1964 and 1974. I clearly recall some of the SIU deckhands telling me that they had brought her up in 1964, and were riding her down to Seattle under tow in 1978. In 14 years I calculated she had covered 1 1/2 million miles on the Delta-Whittier run. She could carry 57 rail-cars, 11 in a lower hold served by an elevator and winch. She was capable of 18 knots. In the summer it took 69 hours dock to dock, taking Hecate Strait and Dixon Entrance and across the Gulf of Alaska. In the winter she would go deep inside SE Alaska and emerge at Cape Spencer, near Glacier Bay. Lashing of the rail-cars took 12 hours , and was usually completed by the time we got to Pine Island. She was registered in Monrovia, Liberia, her call sign 5MAG, and carried a US national with SE and SW Alaska pilotage qualifications as Master. The rest of the crew were Canadians. We did the pilotage from Sand Heads outbound and back.. We took a Fraser River pilot at Sand Heads. We carried a radio operator, whose services were finally dispensed with 1 week before she was laid up. The Americans had no input into the management of the crew. That was left entirely to the Canadians. She would arrive at 8 a.m. on Thursday morning and sail at about 5 pm, every week. The high-value cargo was mostly reefer goods. In an interview Tom Crowley said that the ship never turned a profit. The officers were with the CMSG, while the ratings were with the SIU. That was in the days of 'Tiny' Hines, if you know what that means. The pilots came after the deck officers in a court case in an attempt to recover their dues for the run up the BC coast. I understood that the ship was 'grandfathered' because she was on the coast before the Pilotage Regulations came into force. She was the last foreign-flagged ship to operate on the Canadian coast without a pilot. I have the transcript of the court proceedings, but they are indigestible. Originally she had an open stern, but at some point the after car deck was covered over, and a 59 ton door fitted which was raised by a winch. Owing to the working of the ship across the Gulf the addition, which housed crew cabins, had a large crack which ran from deckhead to deck, which would open and close as she worked in the seaway, and leaked heavily. Being a steam turbine ship she was very quiet and smooth running. I worked 3 weeks on/3 weeks off and I think made about $25,000 a year that way in the late 70's. I was sorry when she was laid up, although the American company people weren't very friendly. There was a Canadian agent who dealt with everything to do with the Canadian side, crew, stores, fuel, longshoremen, etc. Anything else I can help you with. please post your questions here. Attachments:
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2012 11:20:56 GMT -8
View of S.S.Alaska in her berth in Whittier, Alaska. Attachments:
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2012 11:23:59 GMT -8
View of S.S. Alaska in Alaska Steamship Line colours, showing the decked-in stern. Attachments:
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2012 11:25:43 GMT -8
S.S. Alaska in Whittier, showing the stern door raised. Attachments:
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Post by lmtengs on Mar 10, 2012 12:00:14 GMT -8
Interesting story and great photos!
Did she operate mainly as a ferry or as a rail-freighter? Did she carry paid-passengers?
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2012 15:04:16 GMT -8
She operated solely as a train-ship. She never carried paid passengers, but during the summer we carried "guests" of the owners who took the trip one-way. She was never a ferry, in the common-carrier sense of the term.
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deltic
Oiler (New Member)
Marine Superintendent
Posts: 18
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Post by deltic on Dec 16, 2015 10:24:54 GMT -8
Perhaps I can help you here. I was Chief/2nd Officer on the S.S.Alaska from 1975 to 1978, when she was taken out of service. After some time at her berth in Delta she was towed down to Seattle by a Crowley tug. Crowley Red Stack had operated her since 1974, to take advantage of the North Slope boom. She lay in Seattle for a few years, and was then brought back up to Delta to be converted into a machine-shop barge for the Arctic. I saw her being converted in Delta, and again in Tuktoyuktuk, NWT, where she was waiting for disposal.(see photo) She was sold for scrap and, I believe, was under tow to Taiwan when she broke loose and was swept ashore on an island off Alaska somewhere. She was built in 1959 in Kure, Japan as the "City of New Orleans" for West India Fruit and Steamship Company for the Havana to Florida run. She only completed about 100 trips before Castro took over. By 1961 she was laid up somewhere in the States before Alaska Steamship Line bought her in 1964. I always believed that there were two of these ships, and that one sank in the Atlantic. Alaska Steamship wanted to meet the threat posed by Sea-Land and CPR by purchasing the S.S."City of New Orleans", but was unable to operate the ship itself because of Jones Act restrictions. Eventually an Alaska Steamship subsidiary was established to operate the ship, thus avoiding Jones Act restrictions. Registered under the Liberian flag and renamed Alaska, the ship made 500 round-trips between 1964 and 1974. I clearly recall some of the SIU deckhands telling me that they had brought her up in 1964, and were riding her down to Seattle under tow in 1978. In 14 years I calculated she had covered 1 1/2 million miles on the Delta-Whittier run. She could carry 57 rail-cars, 11 in a lower hold served by an elevator and winch. She was capable of 18 knots. In the summer it took 69 hours dock to dock, taking Hecate Strait and Dixon Entrance and across the Gulf of Alaska. In the winter she would go deep inside SE Alaska and emerge at Cape Spencer, near Glacier Bay. Lashing of the rail-cars took 12 hours , and was usually completed by the time we got to Pine Island. She was registered in Monrovia, Liberia, her call sign 5MAG, and carried a US national with SE and SW Alaska pilotage qualifications as Master. The rest of the crew were Canadians. We did the pilotage from Sand Heads outbound and back.. We took a Fraser River pilot at Sand Heads. We carried a radio operator, whose services were finally dispensed with 1 week before she was laid up. The Americans had no input into the management of the crew. That was left entirely to the Canadians. She would arrive at 8 a.m. on Thursday morning and sail at about 5 pm, every week. The high-value cargo was mostly reefer goods. In an interview Tom Crowley said that the ship never turned a profit. The officers were with the CMSG, while the ratings were with the SIU. That was in the days of 'Tiny' Hines, if you know what that means. The pilots came after the deck officers in a court case in an attempt to recover their dues for the run up the BC coast. I understood that the ship was 'grandfathered' because she was on the coast before the Pilotage Regulations came into force. She was the last foreign-flagged ship to operate on the Canadian coast without a pilot. I have the transcript of the court proceedings, but they are indigestible. Originally she had an open stern, but at some point the after car deck was covered over, and a 59 ton door fitted which was raised by a winch. Owing to the working of the ship across the Gulf the addition, which housed crew cabins, had a large crack which ran from deckhead to deck, which would open and close as she worked in the seaway, and leaked heavily. Being a steam turbine ship she was very quiet and smooth running. I worked 3 weeks on/3 weeks off and I think made about $25,000 a year that way in the late 70's. I was sorry when she was laid up, although the American company people weren't very friendly. There was a Canadian agent who dealt with everything to do with the Canadian side, crew, stores, fuel, longshoremen, etc. Anything else I can help you with. please post your questions here.
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deltic
Oiler (New Member)
Marine Superintendent
Posts: 18
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Post by deltic on Dec 16, 2015 10:29:03 GMT -8
I was the fellow who converted her for the Arctic Operations, I use to watch her in Whittier at the time I was Chief on a cruise yacht.
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Post by Name Omitted on Dec 21, 2015 18:39:13 GMT -8
I was the fellow who converted her for the Arctic Operations, I use to watch her in Whittier at the time I was Chief on a cruise yacht. We would be happy for anything about the conversion you wish to share.
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KE7JFF
Chief Steward
Posts: 106
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Post by KE7JFF on Dec 28, 2015 5:04:25 GMT -8
Something I heard was that at one point, CN actually wanted to stop using train ferries and went to as far to actually look into running track from Fort Nelson to Alaska to make connection with the Alaska RR, but apparently projected the project would take 15 years...
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Post by Name Omitted on Dec 29, 2015 7:50:34 GMT -8
Something I heard was that at one point, CN actually wanted to stop using train ferries and went to as far to actually look into running track from Fort Nelson to Alaska to make connection with the Alaska RR, but apparently projected the project would take 15 years... The Alaska-Canada rail link is still being looked at. The most recent Alaska State funded study was, I think, only 2012. More important than studies, we recently built an almost $200 Million beige over the Tanana to get the Railroad to the south side, and onto easier to build land for the push East. We don't have rail to or from that bridge yet, but the idea is to push the line to Delta, which will be of certain utility to the State and to the military for getting to training grounds, but the real reason for the bridge is to get us just that much closer to the border. The era of mega-projects is over, so we have taken to doing them in steps. We no longer talk about a road to Nome, we talk about a road to Tanana (on the same river, but a very different location than the bridge), after which we will talk about a road to Ruby, then to Galena, and at that point we are so close to Koyukuk that we may as well... so on until we get to Nome. Going the other way, using the same model, we have crossed the Tanana, pushing to Delta Junction makes sense, as it will connect the major military installations in Alaska by rail. There is no timeline for when it will happen, and there is no funding allocated to make it happen, but with the bridge built, it will happen. Then, the discussion between Juneau and Whitehorse (it won't be driven from DC or Ottawa) about connecting Yukon mineral resources to the deep-water Port MacKenzie becomes perhaps a billion dollars easier. It will take much longer than 15 years to do this way, but only 6 years or so will be active construction.
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deltic
Oiler (New Member)
Marine Superintendent
Posts: 18
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Post by deltic on Dec 31, 2015 13:32:20 GMT -8
I was the fellow who converted her for the Arctic Operations, I use to watch her in Whittier at the time I was Chief on a cruise yacht. We would be happy for anything about the conversion you wish to share. Kevin I was Offshore Construction Supt. for BeauDril (Gulf Oil) and needed a floating platform to accommodate crew and drilling supplies to support our drilling off of Hershel Island, we had purchased a number of vessels but after the naval architects got done with their conversion cost evaluations Gulf put everything back in mothballs. I new the Alaska quite well and it was just what I needed but the price tag for the conversion was $22 Million according to the preliminary quote from the naval architects, I spent two weeks re-evaluating a conversion cost and came back with $3 Million as I did not require it to be powered (it was going to be a barge, I had lots of supply vessels to move it around if needed).Gulf gave me three months to do the conversion as they wanted her at Cape Barrow for July for the "ice window", I saved the Company an additional $1.5 Million in freight costs as I redirected the supplies that would normally be shipped to Hay River and on up the Mackenzie River by NTCL and loaded 3 years of supplies on the Alaska. I have many pictures of the conversion if you and any others are interested.
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