$28 million for one bridge

and it's the one every train between Anchorage and Denali has to get across.

Hurricane Gulch sits up past Talkeetna, where the tracks run out over a canyon on a steel arch that went up a hundred and five years ago.

The Federal Railroad Administration just handed the Alaska Railroad twenty eight point eight million dollars to fix it. The whole job runs about thirty six million, and the railroad covers the difference itself.

The check got handed over at the Anchorage depot. The railroad's CEO said the building has hosted a lot of great events over the years, but it had never seen a check like that one.

The federal railroad administrator flew up for it. He said the bridge is a hundred years old and needs some tender loving care, which is a soft way to describe a steel arch hanging over a canyon in Alaska.

Then he listed what this railroad deals with that most railroads never do. Avalanches. Floods. Glaciers. Ice.

He planned to go look at the bridge in person the next day.

The money comes out of a five point three billion dollar pot for passenger rail across the country. Alaska's share of that is one bridge, in one canyon, that the whole line north depends on.