Scenic route
Coastal Classic
Anchorage → Seward · United States
- Distance
- 183 km
- Fastest time
- 4 h 35 min
- Average speed
- 40 km/h
- Top speed
- 95 km/h
- Operator
- Alaska Railroad
- Train
- GoldStar dome & Adventure Class cars
- Countries
- United States
- In service since
- 1923
- Runs
- daily mid-May–mid-Sep
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Skirts the bore-tide flats of Turnagain Arm, then climbs past Spencer Glacier into country no road reaches.
The Coastal Classic leaves Anchorage at dawn and spends its first hour pinned between the Chugach peaks and the grey tidal flats of Turnagain Arm, where beluga whales chase the bore tide. At Portage it swings south into the Kenai Mountains, grinding up the Placer River valley past Spencer Glacier and over the Grandview summit through terrain no road has ever reached. The descent follows the Trail Lakes down to Seward, a fishing port ringed by the mountains of Kenai Fjords National Park.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 6824343 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 7 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: Alaska Railroad — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Turnagain Arm bore tide
- Girdwood ski country
- Spencer Glacier
- Grandview summit
- Kenai Lake
- Resurrection Bay at Seward
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