page_title: North Coast Limited
section_title: Inauguration
hierarchical_section_title: North Coast Limited / History / Inauguration
caption_attribution_description: English: Northern Pacific Class E-5, 4-6-0 locomotive NP 300 (formerly NP 629, later NP 326), pulling the North Coast Limited train of the Northern Pacific Railway Co., possibly on its inaugural journey on April 29, 1900. Photo by George M. Weister of the Angelus Studio, Portland, Oregon. Probably taken beside the track near the Columbia River between Portland and Goble where the train would be put on a specially constructed train ferry, the Tacoma, and be taken across the Columbia R. to Kalama on the Washington side.
context_page_description: The North Coast Limited was a named passenger train operated by the Northern Pacific Railway between Chicago and Seattle via Bismarck, North Dakota. It started on April 29, 1900, and continued as a Burlington Northern Railroad train after the merger on March 2, 1970 with Great Northern Railway and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. The next year, it ceased operations after the trains which left their originating stations on April 30, 1971, the day before Amtrak began service, arrived at their destinations.
  After 1918 the Chicago to St. Paul leg of the route was on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad along its Mississippi River line through Wisconsin. The train had a Portland section which split off the Seattle section at Pasco, Washington and ran over NP subsidiary Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway between Pasco and Portland.
  For much of its history the North Coast Limited was known for its dining car service.
context_section_description: Inaugurated on April 29, 1900, between St. Paul, Minnesota, and Puget Sound, the Northern Pacific's North Coast Limited was pulled by NP 300, one of the two 4-6-0 E-5 class locomotives built by the Schenectady Locomotive Works in 1893. The other locomotive was NP 301, later renumbered as 387. 
  The train started as a summer-only service but expanded to a year-round daily train in 1902. The North Coast Limited then ran as Number 1 westbound and Number 2 eastbound.
  Until the rail line was completed to Vancouver in 1908 and the swing Burlington Northern Railroad Bridge was constructed between Vancouver and Portland, the train was put on a specially constructed railroad ferry which crossed the Columbia River between Goble, Oregon and Kalama, Washington. The ferry, the Tacoma (originally christened Kalama), was built in Portland in 1883 out of 57,159 pieces which had been shipped from New York around Cape Horn on board the Tillie E. Starbuck (1883–1907), the first iron sailing vessel built in the United States.
caption: NP 300 (later renumbered 386), pulling the first North Coast Limited train on April 29, 1900, near Portland, Oregon.[1] Photo by George M. Weister of the Angelus Studio.[2][3]
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