Seattlest Urban Archaeology Club: the Seattle Municipal Railway

As we have reported in the past, Seattlest has been fortunate enough to witness the process of the gorgeous rebuilding of the approaches to the Fremont Bridge. It's mostly completed now, with only a few details being attended to. We can't wait for the grand re-opening; they've really done a beautiful job with the redesigned roadway.

The other day, we happened to be walking by and noticed that the workers had scraped off a strip of asphalt along 34th Street to reveal the old tracks of the Seattle Municipal Railway. We got to talking with a few of the construction workers who generously and enthusiastically showed us what they found:

Here is the view along 34th Street, looking east, as it crosses Fremont Ave. The Fremont Bridge is to the right.

Note the asphalt that has been scraped away. Were we prone to spewing post-modern drivel, we might utter something melodramatic like, "notice the thin veneer of modernity blanketting the ruins of the collective past that we so quickly forget!" Then we'd make a crack about the quick rise and fall of the automobile as an efficient means of tranport in the ever-increasing density of the city --and how we can look to the past to save us in the future. Oh, History!

Ahem...

First they just gave us this rusty spike, which has quickly become one of our prized urban archival possessions. It looks just like a railroad spike that you might find while walking along modern tracks except a lot rustier.

Notice that this wild cross-section is much different from the typical cross-section of dedicated rail track that one frequently finds while trespassing on grade-separated "heavy" rail. Apparently, this design in more common in trams and similar "light" rail uses.

Our guy then took a wire brush and cleaned off this gem which is a stamp of the manufacture date of this track. What's more, the length before this part apparently had Bethlehem Steel stamped on it. Bethlehem Steel is pretty symbolic of the might, history, and heyday of American steel production. These days, the only mighty industrial product coming out of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is Peeps.

Beautiful bricks still line the intact sections of track. The workers here only excised a small section of track. Presumably, long lengths of track still lie buried below a few inches of asphalt in the rest of Fremont and/or other parts of the city. Without gloating or patting ourselves on the back too much, we only now realize the significance of this photograph. In the top right corner, we see the concrete of the new roadway as it abutts the existing street and the old railroad tracks beneath. This interface between the contemporary and the historic has since been covered up with a fresh layer of asphalt.

Here is a wider view of the brick-paved street with inset rails.

Again, back to a view of the uncovered tracks. The linear set proceeds eastward while the curved set (left) turns north onto Fremont Ave. We suspect the eastward tracks proceed this way while the northward tracks went up the hill toward Woodland Park.

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By Tom in News on April 16, 2007 2:10 PM

Comments [rss]

Paul

Wikipedia has an excellent overview of the difference between the rails for tram/trolley and for heavy rail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_between_train_and_tram_rails

By the way, I found this discussion because I was looking for info on the Seattle Municipal Railway line to Luna Park, 1907-1913 on the tip of Alki. If anybody has any maps of that line I'd love to know.

railbarge

On the Marginal Way as they go about redoing The Alaskan Way Viaduct, there are remnants of curved rails leading from the Stacy Street railyard to the several piers that used to be in the East Waterway. Pier 27 was the location of the rail barge owned by the CMStP&P. Across the roadway from these piers at this time old rail switches are being removed, [Forest Street to Holgate Street.] The curved rails are peeking through old asphault that is breaking up.

Robert

Nicely done, Tom. Those are some excellent urban artifacts you've got there.

The 45th St repavement project resulted in the exposure of almost a block's worth of brick paving over the weekend, along the part of 45th between Brooklyn and 12th. It was quite the sight to behold.

Tom Irion

The rail with flangeway that we are using now, is not exactly the same shape. It is a European rail, no one makes it in the Western Hemisphere. Regular T-rail is used in light rail with the grooved girder rail used by some lines in streets and road crossings. The flangeway tends to break out prematurely due to our American wheel profile with larger flanges. For this reason, some lines are no longer using the European rail.

Austin Jenkins

Brendan: You are 95% correct about the use of girder rail (the rail in the pictures). I have seen (and operated light rail trains over) regular "T" rail with restraining rail within the city environment (San Jose - just south of the Children's Discovery Museum, in the Yard, and elsewhere). The reason: the girder rail broke after 8-10 years of service; "T" rail life is expected to be closer to 30. We changed it out under traffic - that was 5 months of operational headaches.

Heather McAuliffe, Fremont His

These tracks are part of the "Grand Union", a specialized set of tracks/switches that is found nowhere else in the city. It dates to 1916 if I recall correctly. The rest of the streetcar tracks in Seattle were removed after the streetcar lines ended service in 1941.

The Interurban went north on Fremont. The "Waiting for the Interurban" statue is indeed coming back, but it would be nice if it faced Fremont Ave, where the Interurban ran. Those folks would be waiting a long time!

Seattlest Tom

Brendan, thanks for the correction and the enlightening info! I've made the appropriate corrections to the post. Cheers!

Brendan

They still use that type of rail for trollies and light rail on city streets, and at at-grade crossings - or any place else where rail and regular traffic needs to co-exist (see www.flickr.com/photos/wlindley... for a pic of similar as used by Phoenix's light rail).

The "cross-section of modern track" that you link to is instead used on dedicated rail tracks.

Neither shape has changed much over the years - it's really comparison of rails-in-city-streets vs dedicated tracks, as opposed to old-vs-modern.

Seth

As an editor, I pledge this to you, sarah irene--we at Seattlest will never be out-post-modern-thunk!

Seattlest Tom

Sarah,

Indeed! I swoon for palimpsests. But I could easily run away with the jargon and metaphor if I don't stop myself. Maybe next time, though, I will spew more about fragments of the past assembling themselves into a multi-era picture of the built environment which, though incomplete with respect to one particular time period, forms an aggregate whole with a distinct sense of pastness! :)

Seattlest Tom

Dale, the sculpture will certainly be returning to it's former location. The foundation is in place and some experts, according the construction workers, are supposed to install it. "We're only construction workers," they said far too humbly.

sarah irene

Your postmodern musings wouldn't be complete without discussing the elegance of the metaphor of the palimpsest in analyzing the urban landscape.

Dale

I saw them while cycling by the other day and I'm glad you got some shots of them. It makes one think about the relevance of the "Waiting for the Interurban" sculpture which I hope will be soon returned to its rightful place across the street from where the tracks are/were.