Re: Trestle on Lookout Pass
Author: Bruce Kelly
Date: 11-13-2013 - 19:11
George, that trestle is long gone. It was on the west slope of Lookout Pass in a side canyon south of where I-90 now runs. According to "Railroads Through the Coeur d'Alenes" by John Wood, the last train crossed that trestle in 1963, and soon after that NP resorted to a switchback in the canyon rather than do repairs on the trestle. BN's last train over Lookout Pass was in 1980. There were a number of smaller but equally impressive trestles on the east slope as well. You'd be forgiven for thinking the S-curve trestle still operated today, or at least into the BNSF era, if you had bought into what was written in a certain BNSF book that came out a few years ago. A hand-colored postcard view of the trestle was captioned as showing "...a four-car passenger train on the Northern Pacific branch to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho." I can assure you that no such trestle or scenery was ever located anywhere along NP's branch to Coeur d'Alene. The author and/or editors of that book were apparently thrown off path by the inscription "Coeur d'Alene Branch, N.P. Railroad" on the photo. NP's branch westward over Lookout Pass was originally called the Coeur d'Alene Branch, but later became the Wallace Branch after NP built its true Coeur d'Alene Branch from Hauser Junction, Idaho, to Coeur d'Alene.