Wednesday night was a night of celebration for the Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad. This week, they had just completed the purchase of the rail lines they had been previously leasing from Tacoma Rail. It’s the latest achievement for the crew of 12 full-time employees that reopened the railroad in 2023. Then the calls came in. A fire on a bridge nearby.
“We started getting messages on our phones and hadn’t confirmed the railroad was on fire, but we were a little suspicious,” said Bethan Maher, the executive director of the Western Forest Industries Museum, which operates the Railroad.
As the last light of dusk faded away, Maher and some of her colleagues confirmed what they had feared—a 128-foot trestle bridge was up in flames, powered by the flammable creosote that coated the wooden beams,…