Is the home of the railway. Its also where the tourists flock in by the ship load each day, discharged almost directly onto the trains that take them up the hill to the Summit, Bennet, and soon to Carcross. This is a serious tourist operation, five or six trains a day six days a week in peak session, nearly half a million passengers a year!
Despite this, the town has managed to retain a lot of its historic buildings and its charm. When we returned each day, the big cruise liners had all but about left, leaving us to savour the town. Speaking of savouring, the Castaway Cafe and the Sweet-tooth Cafe are the places for dinner and breakfast.
The railway maintains a large workshop here, and do almost all of their maintenance in-house. They maintain a large fleet of coaches, ALCO diesels, a couple of steam engines, and a steam snow blower..
They also let the speeders set on and off from a spur to the balloon loop.
MP2.
The first train of the day heads out, as John waits for it to clear so we can run the balloon. and get going.
The climb commences on the wharf. These locos use a similar power plant to the 830/44 classes in Australia - and each thunderbird on each loco is different!
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© Nic Doncaster 2006