Then and now: North Coast Limited

In the late 1800s and the early 20th century, railroad entrepreneurs competed to create a seamless railroad system, connecting every region by railroad. The biggest challenge was the connecting the northwest to large midwest cities.

Section:Gallery

Sun., Jan. 19, 2020

The Northern Pacific’s streamlined North Coast Limited enters Spokane from Portland along the rim of Hangman Canyon in 1953, passing near the concrete Sunset Highway Bridge. The steel bridge in the distance carried Union Pacific trains bound for Seattle. It was dismantled in the early 1970s after rail companies agreed to put all trains through a single downtown corridor in preparation for Expo ’74.

The Spokesman-Review Photo Archive
The railroad tracks in the foreground, shown Monday, Jan. 13, 2019, head southwest from Spokane to the Tri-Cities and west to Portland as they have for more than a century. The tracks once carried the North Coast Limited, the Empire Builder and other long-distance passenger trains to coastal cities. But the transportation landscape has changed, including the addition of Interstate 90 in the 1960s and the addition of elevated downtown tracks in the early 1970s in the build-up to Expo ’74.

Jesse Tinsley The Spokesman-Review