The Corps of Engineers appropriated the White Pass and Yukon Railroad as a critical link between the harbor at Skagway and the interior. The 770th Railway Battalion ran it for them. The WP & YT ran a daily train, the 770th ran 30 daily trains. The 770th recruited experienced men from seventeen major railroads – mechanics, engineers, firemen, conductors, brakemen, section hands, telegraphers, and cooks. The WP&YT proved a new experience even for the veterans of the 770th. Pvt. Howard Foley, employed as a civilian by the Long Island Railroad in New York, reported, after the 110 mile ride to Whitehorse, “that line’s too steep for a goat and too cold for a polar bear.” Leaving Skagway the train climbs 2900 feet in nineteen miles. The lead locomotive in often as much as thirty feet higher than the last freight care as it climbs through steep mountain curves.
The 770th moved more tonnage over the little line than anyone could possibly have expected. But in the fall of 1942, arctic weather returned and operations became truly dicey. As temperatures dropped toward 60 below and drifts climbed toward twenty feet, train wheels and couplings froze and rotary plows stalled. The 770th dropped to two trains a week and the worn out stock couldn’t handle even that. But the Corps still needed shipping. Time passed-arctic time. Now the water in the tower froze solid and a half an inch of frost covered the fire doors on the locomotives. Condensed steam froze the crew’s coveralls and parkas solid.
One fascinating story reveals what winter operation meant for the 770th. A train stopped at the top of the pass to fill its boiler tanks with water. While it stopped, its wheels froze to the rails. The crew summoned help and another locomotive arrive to ‘bump it loose’. No go. Now the track had captured a train and another locomotive.
Arriving on the scene with twenty men, Colonel Wilson, hurried them to shovel snow into the tanks of both engines to maintain water in the boilers. Running out of coal, the soldiers chopped railroad ties to keep the engines running. In the end, though, the engines quit.
Isolated and nearly frozen, Wilson and his men found an empty cabin with space for six. They made it do for twenty. The cabin had a stove and the men stoked it with railroad ties, but the fire barely provided warmth. By the fourth day food was sparse. A master of the art of understatement, Wilson wrote in his diary “situation at Fraser Loop serious”. At length, a D4 dozer loaded with food supplies inched out of Carcross and onto frozen Lake Bennett. Bucking the wind as he crossed frozen Lake Bennett, the operator made his way to the top of the pass and a dramatic rescue. Wilson later said, “that bulldozer looked to us like six regiments with colors flying.” That night they feasted on fried bacon, beans and potatoes. On the 11th day a rotary plow finally managed to break through. With the tracks clear the trains made their way back to Skagway.
