Today was all about a train ride.

I walked to the station reasonably early (7.15am for 8.30am start) to find the station full of people. I was surprised so many people wanted to travel to Fairbanks. But when I got on the train (I was in Carriage A, Seat 8D which meant a window seat) it was only about a half full. The train was to take 11.5 hours to travel from Anchorage to Fairbanks, with ETA of 8.00pm).

The train consisted of 2 engines, followed by a dining car, followed by two passenger cars, with the luggage car at the end. We took off on time, whilst it was still dark, which meant for some very nice photos early on. There was one vestibule on each of the two passenger cars, and these had the top half of the door removed to allow for photos to be taken. Each vestibule could fit about 3 people each side. And generally there was only photos worth taking on one side at a time. This wasn’t due to there being nothing picturesque on both sides, there was plenty to see. In fact the whole trip was nothing short of majestic. However both sides of the track from Anchorage to Fairbanks were covered by thin trees or Christmas trees. These trees stopped the camera from focusing on anything beyond them (mountains, off-grider shacks, etc.), and given the speed of the train, made the trees themselves blurry.

And with around 30 photographers on the train including around 10 hard core photographers (including myself), it was a battle to race to the vestibules first when something really great to photograph came along, or there was a break in the trees (although by the time I’d race to the vestibule, waiting my turn, focus the camera on the mountains or lakes, we’d be back to trees to block the view). It was too cold to stay in or around the vestibules for more than about 1 minute, so that was not a solution. In the seat beside me was a young lady from one of the “lower 48” (as Alaskans call the main body of USA states) who was working in Anchorage studying water use and reuse opportunities in remote communities, with her parents across the aisle. After I got up a couple of times to take photos (I had the window, she had the aisle seat), she decided to go to sit somewhere else. I offered to move to another seat myself but she was okay.

Here are a couple of my earlier photos.

We got to Mount Denali and those around it, and so I got a couple of shots of that too.

By around 3pm, the temperature was cooling and the sun was starting to go down. So I got a few shots around that too.

By around 4pm, it was so cold that the few remaining photographers were all rugged up when getting into the vestibule. I made the mistake a couple of time of putting my head out to get some photos of the train as it made a curve.

After that my head hurt so much from the cold and wind that I couldn’t take any more photos out of the vestibule windows. For those who have had a cold forehead when eating something cold too fast (like ice cream or a frozen drink or dessert), where you have to hang your head for a few seconds to let your head get back to normal – imagine it 20 times as bad. Plus the cold seeped through my gloves, and even though I had a handwarmer, I didn’t think a few photos were worth losing my fingers over. I have never had them so cold. So after that I only took a few photos through the window next to my seat. Apart from that I put on an audiobook to listen to.

During the trip we were offered breakfast, lunch and dinner. I had already had a free breakfast at my hotel so gave that a miss, but I had a tasty lunch of corn and vegetable soup, followed by a Reindeer Sausage Hogie.

The reindeer was not as tough as emu, in fact more like kangaroo in texture but more like emu in taste. I am hoping that everyone gets Christmas presents this year, as I’d feel really terrible if it turns out that I have eaten Rudolph.

For dinner I had Chef Alexa’s Penne Special, which included a blend of red and green peppers, onions and mushroom in a coconut milk tomato sauce. It was quite tasty. I might try it myself with some home grown chillis to add some bite.

About 7pm, the engineer advised the train host that he could see a little of the aurora borealis. So they turned the lights off and about two thirds of the passengers crammed across to see it. I wasn’t one of them. Mainly because there wasn’t much room on that side and a number of the passengers had their phone torches on, meaning you couldn’t see anything anyway. I hope to see it on my trip to Coldfoot in a few days. Overall it was a very enjoyable train ride. We arrived at Fairbanks about 5 minutes early. It was a very crisp (-) minus 20 degrees Celsius. Then I caught a taxi to my hotel (Westmark Fairbanks Hotel) , unpacked, went down to check out the laundry, spent about 20 minutes on the crosstrainer and rowing machine in the fitness centre, and then went to bed.