Skagway, Alaska. World War 2.

The White Pass and Yukon played an important roll in WW2. The Alaska Highway or AlCan from Dawson Creek B.C. was to be build to Fairbanks Alaska a distance of 1500 miles through wilderness.
This highway will bring troops surplus goods tanks to flight with Japan that bombed Dutch Habor in Southeast Alaska. U.S. Troops arrive from the southern states to help build a highway, many of them never saw snow nor worked in the extreme elements of the North. Whitehorse in the Yukon was the halfway point on the highway and was supplied by the White pass railroad, with its southern point Skagway.
So over 300 troops invade Skagway over night in 1942 and the U.S.A. 770th division took over the entire 110 miles of railroad. Ships from Seattle Washington sailed over 100 miles to Skagway unloaded, the trains took the freight north all the way to Whitehorse and the highway was built east and west. They completed 1500 miles of road in just 9 months.
This picture that I drew with pastels, shows a train going up Broadway St. with flat cars carrying everything from trucks to planes to bulldozers. The railroad carried more freight, over 330,000 tons, than all the freight it carried side the gold rush of 1898.