The Northwest Railway Museum’s railroad has many safety obligations, and chief among them are 13 public crossings. Northern Street is in downtown Snoqualmie and serves a residential neighborhood, and while it receives only light traffic, many decades of use and several major flood events that submerged the track have taken their toll. In June 2018 a project with the City of Snoqualmie began improving the crossing.
Volunteers and staff from the Museum along with a crew from Monroe Correctional removed the timber crossing planks, removed mud that had collected in the tie cribs, and set about improving the structure.
The tie cribs were refilled with clean ballast, and down ties were tamped up. New crossing planks from Wheeler Lumber in South Dakota were then installed between the rails. The new planks were cut from coastal Douglas fir and treated with copper naphthenate. They were fastened in place with timber screws and by the end of the day the crossing was open to traffic.
