AK RR Engine No. 1

The Alaska Railroad Engine Number One sits under a glass pavilion, a squat, black steam locomotive with the name Anchorage painted in white across its tender. This engine hauled the first passenger train from the docks to the rail yards in nineteen twenty-three. President Warren G. Harding drove the golden spike to finish the line that year, but he never actually rode this engine. It spent decades shifting freight through the mud and snow before being retired to a park pedestal.