The White Pass and Yukon Route railway moved a dozen cars refurbished in Whitehorse from Carcross to Skagway last Friday.

The move occurred two days after last Wednesday’s 120th anniversary of the Golden Spike driven in Carcross July 29, 1900, officially tying together the two sections of the railway – Whitehorse to Carcross, and Carcross to Skagway.

WP & YR president Samuel H. Graves drove the spike, two years after the first rails were laid in Skagway.

“Thirty-five thousand men worked on the construction of the railroad – some for a day, others for a longer period, but all shared in the dream and the hardship,” reads an historical account of the project published by WP &YR.

“The $10 million project was the product of British financing, American engineering and Canadian contracting.

“Tens of thousands of men and 450 tons of explosives overcame harsh and challenging climate and geography to create this wonder of steel and timber.”

White Pass marketing manager Jacqueline Taylor-Rose told the Star in an interview last week she wonders what the original founders of the railway would say today, knowing their dream is still alive 120 years later.

“It think with 120 years, it would have been nice to do something for our passengers on the train,” she said, though WP & YR shut down operations this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There is something to be said about a business that can still be in business after 120 years.”

The railway between Skagway and Whitehorse initially served as a link to the interior Yukon, and provided a step closer to the Klondike gold fields without having to climb the Chilkoot Trail.

Even after the Klondike Gold Rush, the railway remained viable as a primary tool to move goods inland from the port.

It was instrumental in moving freight to aid in the construction of the Alaska Highway.

In later years, it moved ore from the Faro mine from Whitehorse to Skagway for shipment to overseas smelters.

It was during the recession in the early 1980s that the Faro mine closed down, and the railway suspended operations shortly after that.

But in 1988, WP & YR transitioned to a tourist attraction, beginning with rides up to the White Pass Summit and eventually to Bennett in the 1990s and all the way to Carcross beginning in 2007.

Taylor-Rose said the 12 passenger cars refurished in Whitehorse by Cobalt Construction had been scheduled to be in service this year.

“The entire Alaskan cruise ship season has been cancelled so we suspended service until 2021,” she said.

On average, said Taylor-Rose, the WP & YR sees about 500,000 passengers in a regular summer season.

She said most of the refurbishing work on the dozen passenger cars was focused on the exterior with new paint jobs.

There was some work done on the interiors, a general spruce-up where needed, she said.

Taylor-Rose said in addition to the work on the passenger cars, WP & YR purchased two new diesel locomotives built by National Railway Equipment Company in Mount Vernon, Ill.

White Pass also leased four more, raising its entire fleet of locomotives to 24 after they’d sent two locomotives to the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in Colorado, she explained.

Taylor-Rose said two White Pass employees with Canadian citizenship drove the train from Carcross to a new staging area at the Yukon-Alaska border built two years ago.

A crew from Skagway took the train from the border down into town, she said.