DC Jesse Burkhardt 116 pages softcover
The Unabandoned Routes: Pacific Northwest Railroads serves as an
essential companion work to 2025's The Art of Abandonment: Railroad
Abandonments in the Pacific Northwest, also published by America Through
Time. With this new book, the overall theme shifts from abandoned rail
lines to railroad routes still active across the Northwest. This
photojournalistic work features 165 photographs from recent decades,
along with extensive captions, to detail operations in the region's
transportation network. Across five chapters, author and photographer D.
C. Jesse Burkhardt takes us on a visual journey through a territory
that includes Oregon and Washington, as well as parts of Idaho and
California, to capture the ongoing evolution of the rail system.
Highlighted here are fast freights on BNSF's and Union Pacific's
mainline tracks, shortlines hauling a few cars to serve a customer or
two on backwater branches, sleek Amtrak passenger trains transporting
riders around the region, and a brief glimpse at rail activities in
neighboring states and Canadian provinces to underscore similarities in
history and operations. The Unabandoned Routes spotlights dynamic
movement in the contemporary landscape, celebrating the resilience of
the Northwest's railroad lines and the companies that manage them.
