The Seattle and North Coast Railroad was a 50-mile long shortline born from remnants of the Milwaukee Road’s operation on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. The only connection to any other railroad was by car ferry, across Puget Sound to Seattle. By 1984, the railroad ceased operations, due to the costs needed to upgrade the physical plant (due to the bankrupt Milwaukee Road’s deferred maintenance) and a downturn in demand for the pulp, paper, plywood and lumber products produced on the Peninsula at the time the railroad started up. Seen at the S&NC’s ferry landing at Pier 2 in Seattle’s Elliott Bay is SW1200 55, which was originally Milwaukee Road’s #614 (and before that, MILW 1637).
An exclamation attributed to TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson, it is this eponymous expression of which certain images convey man and machine versus nature . . .
