The Farthest North Garden Railway

Planning the  Great Northern Phase II Layout (GN-Phase II): The Northern Pacific Railway

  
   
     
  Then there was the Northern Pacific Railroad itself. I had not counted on adding yet another railroad to the roster. I already had the Great Northern, the Sante Fe and the Alaska Railroad.  
   
  An NP coal train at Cle Elum. Click for larger image.  
     
   
  The Northern Pacific depot at Cle Elum  
     
   
 

Plan showing the NP depot footprint at Roslyn.

I never found a picture of the depot--only of the railroad warehouse which is sometimes mistaken for the NP depot. It is possible that no depot was  ever constructed at Roslyn. This location would be immediately behind the NWIC building which makes it unlikely that this depot was ever located here in Roslyn.  

Below you see a map I made on the computer showing my route from my hotel room in Cle Elum to Roslyn. What is interesting is that this map clearly shows the old rail lines of both the NP Roslyn short line and also the Milwaukee Road mainline which once existed to the south of the NP (now the  BNSF) mainline.  All of that track is now gone.  When I finally made my first visit there during the Labor Day weekend of 2007, I looked for railroad track and structures and found very little to indicate that the Northern  Pacific had been there. Even the old NP depot at Cle Elum is gone.

 
     
   
  The coals mines of Roslyn only made sense in the context of the Northern Pacific Railway. After all, those mines were wholly owned by NP for the original purpose of providing a ready source of fuel for their steam engines when those mines were first developed back in the 1880s.  Thus it was only logical that at some point elements of the NP Railway would be included in my proposed Cicely model--an extension of my much larger Great Northern--GN Phase II model. In time, that too would grow from GN Phase II to something more inclusive.  
 
 
     
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