Mountain Muscle. The White Pass & Yukon's 1908 Baldwin 2-8-0 #69 switches shop leads at the south end of the White Pass Yard, as she prepares to couple up with Mikado #73 and Rotary #1 for a day of plow operations. It is difficult to describe the 69 as anything but utilitarian. With her big, fat boiler and outside frame, there's not much that's pretty about her. She was built for one thing and one thing only. Pushing heavy loads up to White Pass. Although the newer 70-class Mikados are the steam engines most often depicted in photos of this line, the 69 is actually more representative of the locomotives that served on the White Pass from just after the turn of the century until just before World War II. The 70-class and 190-class engines did not come along until the late 1930s and 1940s. In comparison to the more modern engines, the 69 is crude. She has a deckless cab that makes communication between crewmembers difficult at best. She's also not superheated and needs water support while on the hill. That said, she still offers the same thing she did when she first arrived....mountain muscle for heavy loads going up the hill in Skagway!
