Many times in the last century proposals have been made which would connect Alaska to the stateside mainline by means of a rail line. Most of the early proposals were inspired by the Klondike gold strike. The principal ones are shown below.
None of these ever materialized of course. The nature of the Far North is boom and bust. The population has always been relatively small while the distances are great--and that is an understatement. One of those proposals is a rail line between New York and Paris which would have involved an impossible tunnel under the Bering Straits. That is still a proposal which surfaces from time to time in one form or another. Here is the most recent example:
"With the convocation of the April 24, 2007 Moscow International Conference on Megaprojects, which called for the building of the Bering Strait bridge-tunnel crossing, the prospects for a new era in international economic cooperation, and war avoidance, took on new life. The proposed project to link Siberia and Alaska across the Bering Strait goes back decades, but, in the present context, would represent the crowning link in what is called the Eurasian Land-Bridge Project . . . from the Executive Intelligence Review
Below is a more recent proposal to exploit large-scale mining activity at that time.
One of the alternatives linked directly with the existing narrow gauge White Pass & Yukon. The other would have had to link to Ft. Nelson to connect with a standard gauge that would have truly created a northern trans-continental railroad. Of course, neither of these alternatives ever became reality. In fact, by the early 1980s, most all of those mines were closed. That ore had been trucked to the WP & Y line where it was shipped to the port of Skagway. When the ore shipments stopped, the WP & Y shut down and was only rescued years later by a resurgence of tourism into the area. Those mines never reopened and the WP & Y line between Whitehorse and Lake Bennett was never revived.
From that same EIR is this proposal for an Alcan Route railroad system:
Alaska-Canada
Railway Corridor Project
"There is renewed and increasing interest in the completion of a railroad linkage between Alaska and the rest of the North American rail network. Five recent developments which enhance the potential for completing this railroad linkage between Alaska and Canada to the North American rail network are as follows: 1. The recently announced sale of the British Columbia Railway by the Province of British Columbia to the Canadian National Railway; 2.The legislation passed by the State of Alaska to promote the construction of a new natural gas pipeline from Alaska to Alberta and the Lower 48 States; 3. The legislation enacted by the Alaska State Legislature to create a new railroad corridor to the Yukon Territory and to authorize the issuance of revenue bonds; 4. The decision to proceed with the extension of the Alaska Railroad from Eielson Air Force Base near the North Pole to Fort Greeley near Delta Junction for the new missile defense base; 5. Recent events causing the increasing cost of crude oil and natural gas with growing concerns about their supplies.
"There is growing interest in expansion of the North American rail network with the recently announced sale of the British Columbia Railway to the Canadian National Railway, in parallel with the extension of the Alaska Railroad. These recent announcements revive the earlier plans to extend the British Columbia Railway to Fort Nelson, which was completed in the 1960s, and the effort to complete the rail line to Dease Lake in the 1970s, which was not completed. There had been earlier studies of expanding the Canadian railroad network to the Yukon Territory in the 1960s and 1970s by the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railroads, as well as by the Province of British Columbia. However, these efforts never went beyond the study plan. . . "
With all of this in mind, and with special attention paid to the Cassiar line that runs through Dease Lake, I present the ALCANEX (Alaska-Canada Northern Expo) Consolidated Railway System, which would take advantage of the existing Cassiar railbed to bring a rail line from Seattle to Alaska, and specifically to the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska.
This one would come about as a result of the proposal Alaska Canada natural gas line project, of which two such proposals are now on the desk of the governor of Alaska for her consideration. In real life, the only possibility of a railroad ever reaching Alaska is also tied to this proposal through another group of investors. Although this rail proposal, like all which went before it, is a long-shot, it IS out there. But the ALCANEX Consolidated (ALCANEX-Con, if you prefer) becomes an entity with the creation of my Phase II project.