by Mike May/photos by the author
Like many in the hobby, my interest in railroads and building models goes back to a time in childhood that I can hardly remember. Somewhere along the way, I became fascinated with narrow gauge railroads, including the famed White Pass & Yukon Route.
I did not know much about the railroad until I visited it in 2008. Needless to say the railway, its personality, its history, and the natural landscape in which it operates immediately resonated with me. It took me a couple of years of dreaming, a few more visits, and collecting several brass models before the time was right to start building the White Pass in HOn3.
Rewritten History
The real three-foot gauge White Pass & Yukon Route Railway was built in 1898 to connect the ocean port in Skagway, Alaska, to the Yukon River in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, to access the recently discovered gold fields deeper in the Yukon. In just 20 miles the railroad climbs from sea level to the summit of White Pass, situated on the U.S.-Canadian border, nearly 3,000 ft. above sea level. From there, the railroad tackles the remote Canadian wilderness for another 90 miles to reach the banks of the Yukon River at Whitehorse. In the early days, the primary business was transporting miners into this remote country where they would then travel by river another 400 miles northwest to the gold fields near Dawson City. Not only did the miners need transport, but the railroad was also hauling an endless stream of supplies to support the mining activity in the area, then inaccessible by any other means.

ABOVE: Near Bennett a northbound train briefly breaks the serenity of this untouched wilderness. A few musicians who ventured deep into the woods also found peace in the wild country.
The Klondike Gold Rush peaked between 1896 and 1899, and in the years following, business for the railroad waxed and waned as richer deposits were discovered in nearby Alaska. The railroad would go on to reinvent itself many times, though it remained an essential transportation system to supply the interior of the Yukon.
America’s entry into World War II in 1941 provided a second major boom time for the railroad with the U.S. government’s initiative to build the Alaska-Canadian Highway, connecting Alaska with the rest of the continental United States. Trains hauled construction supplies from ships in Skagway to Whitehorse, which was situated at a convenient mid-point of the massive construction project.

ABOVE: A pair of iconic Class 90 shovelnose diesels charge southbound through the wilderness of British Columbia. Built in four different orders between 1954 and 1966 by General Electric, they were equipped with Alco 251 prime movers. They were rebuilt with Cummins diesels between 2010 and 2011, but have since been retired in the real world. WP&Y 94 and 96 and were built in 1956 and 1963 respectively.
The completion of the highway resulted in an overall decline in rail traffic until the prospect of another major mining project in the Yukon developed. In 1969, White Pass signed a contract with the Cyprus Anvil Mine in Faro, Yukon, about 225 miles north of Whitehorse. WP&YR trucks would carry the lead-zinc ore in custom-built containers from the mine to a new rail yard to be built in Whitehorse where it would be transferred to rail.
For the railroad, the contract was enormous and was the first time in the railroad’s history that a huge investment was made in physical infrastructure as well as the purchase of new locomotives and rolling stock. During this time the White Pass transformed itself into a modern narrow gauge railroad in an era when most of North American’s narrow gauge lines were already gone. The ore-hauling boom wouldn’t last forever, though. In 1982, the mine closed and the railroad abruptly ceased operations, falling into dormancy until the railroad reopened as a tourist operation in 1988.

ABOVE: At northern latitudes the days are short but that doesn’t stop the White Pass crews from keeping freight moving in Skagway. The MV Talkeetna prepares to set sail so an inbound White Pass container ship can dock in a few hours. Meanwhile a night switch job spots cars ready to be loaded onto the ship. The entire model railroad has a lighting system that runs a 24-hour day to night cycle keeping realism with just a touch of theatricality.
These late years of ore-hauling have always fascinated me since, unlike other narrow gauge roads in North America, the White Pass had the opportunity to rebuild itself into a modern railroad of the 1970s. For my model railroad I decided that I wanted to capture this feeling of a modern narrow gauge operation, but also wanted the flexibility for some proto-freelancing as well. I set my model railroad in 1983, one year after the prototype closed, but changed history in my miniature world so the mine never closed and operations are just as busy as they were only a few years prior.
Building a Layout for Future Relocation
At the time I started building this layout I was living in Chicago and working for Amtrak as a locomotive engineer. The job gave me a lot of flexibility to work on the layout, but the big drawback of an uncertain future of where I might be living in a few years’ time. Not wanting to hold off starting the layout and having the ability to move it if the time came, I built it in sections somewhat like a modular railroad. The difference is that the sections do not follow any “standard” and only go together in a specific way. Admittedly, they are not easy to move, but the design has paid off in the 12 years I’ve had the layout assembled in three different homes. Hopefully this one will last for a much longer time!
Each section is different but none is longer than six feet. They’re all built on an open grid frame of 1×4” clear pine and a sub-roadbed of 1/2” plywood on risers. The terrain is all built on a base of stacked 1” pink insulation foam to keep things as lightweight as possible…