Small trains give Alaskans and visitors a taste of ride the rails.
Alaska Live Steamers, Wasilla
A group of enthusiasts has built 3,000 feet of narrow-gauge route through the birch and spruce forest west of Wasilla. They also built the engines and rolling stock.
For a few dollars, passengers can sit on small cars for a 20- to 30-minute ride through the woods over long trestles, past a miniature town and through a tunnel. The track is 7.5-inch gauge and the equipment is one-eighth of the prototype's size.
The trains run regularly on the first and third Saturdays, but they run almost any Saturday from mid-May until snow closes the track in October.
To reach the kid-friendly Alaska Live Steamers, turn off the Parks Highway at Mile 47. (The turnoff is just west of where the tracks go under the Parks Highway.)
The train site is between the Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry and the Wasilla airport. The museum displays model railroads from Thanksgiving through December and has Alaska Railroad cars and locomotives.
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Crooked Creek and Whisky Island Railroad, Fairbanks
The narrow gauge Crooked Creek & Whisky Island Railroad runs inside Alaskaland, Fairbanks' history and culture theme park. The one-mile route passes the Chena River and various attractions inside the park. Admission to the park is free, but the train fare is $2 for adults and $1 for kids.
It is operated from Memorial Day through Labor Day. The park, at Airport Way and Peger Road on the west side of town, is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily during the summer.
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Tanana Valley Railroad, Fox
A ticket on the railroad comes with admission to El Dorado Gold Mine, a working mine near Fox north of Fairbanks. The train passes through a permafrost tunnel and across some of the area's original gold fields.
The mine is 9 miles north of Fairbanks on the Elliott Highway, or Highway 2. Admission to the mine (it's on the itinerary of many large tour groups) is $30 for adults, and $20 for kids 3-12 and free for kids 2 and under.
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Alaska State Fair, Palmer
A narrow gauge route with rudimentary cars is great for giving kids a brief clickety-clack ride between the east gate and the livestock barn. The fair runs for 11 days ending on Labor Day.
Tickets cost $3.
