White Pass & Yukon Route No. 73

No. 73 is a narrow-gauge 2-8-2 “Mikado” built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in May 1947, the last of four 70-class engines Baldwin built for the White Pass & Yukon Route and, notably, the very last narrow-gauge steam locomotive Baldwin ever constructed. Crews nicknamed it the “Queen of the Fleet.” Built to originally burn coal, it was converted to oil firing during the 1950s and spent nearly two decades hauling both freight and passenger trains over the steep, twisting grades between Skagway, Alaska, and Whitehorse, Yukon.

WP&YR retired No. 73 from revenue service on June 30, 1964, as the railway dieselized. The locomotive was placed on static display at Bennett, British Columbia, in 1968, then moved to Whitehorse in 1979 to be restored to operating condition. Restoration was completed in 1982, and No. 73 made its return run on May 29 of that year, resuming excursion service on the line it once worked as a revenue freight hauler.

Since then No. 73 has undergone several major overhauls, including a roughly $500,000 rebuild completed in 2004 and another finished in 2014. In 2017 it went out of service for its mandated FRA 1,472-day inspection, a process that stretched to two years at a Seattle shop before the locomotive returned to Skagway in July 2019 and resumed hauling excursion trains. As the larger of WP&YR’s operating steam engines, No. 73 remains a centerpiece of the railway’s summer excursion season along the historic gold-rush route through White Pass.