08/23/2026
After we left Talkeetna 🏘️ it was time for a short bus ride 🚐 to the Princess train depot 🚉 to catch our train 🚂 down to Whittier.
Now I DO want to be transparent here- I use the term “train depot” very loosely. There is a train depot in Talkeetna, but that is not the same depot where you board to take your transfer for the Princess Rail down to Whittier. (We were in “The Last Frontier”!) ☺️ This depot is down a gravel road 🪨 in the woods along the tracks 🛤️. There is no building, no platform - however there is extreme organization. The buses 🚍 which come from different locations (different ends of different cruise tours) each have an assigned number and are only allowed to arrive in a certain order. There is constant radio traffic working to make this happen. We actually had to stop, pull over and wait so that some buses could pass us as to not mess us the process. This order corresponds to the rail car with which that bus’s 🚍 passengers will be riding in. Once again Princess Cruise Lines has every detail find tuned to flow smoothly.
Once the train is nearing the depot, passengers are allowed to deboard the bus and line up at their corresponding rail car area (which was issued in our packet the night before). For the most part, each bus matches up with a rail car next to its parking spot. There are a few benches available for those that need to sit but for the most part it is a fairly short wait. As the train arrives, the passengers from the train disembark and find their bus number from which they will start their Cruisetour and those ending their Cruisetour and starting their cruise board the train to head to the ship.
And just like that, one set of Cruise tour guests are off on a land adventure of a lifetime and one set of cruisers are getting ready to hit the open seas to explore the shorelines of Alaska!
As a side note I do want to add that we did not have the typical Princess rail experience with the Princess rail train dining cars and the open air cars. I have tried to contact Princess a couple of times to find out why without an answer. I will say that I was disappointed to not have the open air cars as I was looking forward to that part of the experience. I do know that along our way, I believe it was near Anchorage, there was a train that was broken down so maybe that was the reasoning. Anyway we were on an Alaskan Rail system and we did have excellent service despite no open air car so it was still an amazing experience and we did still have the glass dome view!
