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Enduring Gifts

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It was May 23, 1961 when the final Olympian Hiawatha, train 15, departed the station at Missoula, MT. Located at MP 1641 and several miles beyond Ravenna, the Milwaukee carefully follows the Clark Fork River through the city as it winds through different compound curves in and out of town.  These images were taken in the mid-2000s, captured on Kodachrome and a trusty Pentax LX. The final #15 can be seen here , courtesy of the Montana Historical Portal and Montana State Library. There were no electric locomotives that day and seemingly no Skytop Lounge at the rear.  The Superdome endures to the final run, however, and acknowledges the status of these passenger trains as a symbol, even to the end.  Looking East from the station, the path of old overhead wires is obvious The Clark Fork under Big Sky blue  And the end for the Olympian Hi was earlier than many. Other western railroads maintained their top passenger train until the dawn of Amtrak and often hoste...
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Marching West in Time

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  Not far from Ravenna and MP1614 the transcon lofts itself over the Clark Fork River above.  The river has been a frequent obstacle to the Resourceful Railroad and which has followed it carefully for many miles since crossing the Continental Divide.  The Northern Pacific is only yards away here, and even I90 follows the carefully plotted route between mountain ranges. The photo was taken years ago when the railroad had only been gone for 20 years. Back then, 20 years seemed like a lifetime. Now two decades seems simply like a chapter - or maybe two.  This crossing of the Clark Fork reminds me that one can revisit a bank along a stream, but the water is always different.   This is the march of time and the days that mark it:  the sun rises and the sun sets, always progressing its way across the sky like a champion running a race while the world changes beneath.  It rose that day 20 years ago on an abandoned railroad left to history and the works o...
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Joy in all its Sadness

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Previously, dear reader, I shared an image of Substation 9 from across the Clark Fork River, taken from the side of today's I-90.  Today, access is difficult and by permission only.  One must travel the old right of way in from the west by using the same roadbed that was the foundation for all of those electrics that came this way many decades ago.   But when I-90 was only the Sunset Highway there was a different path to walk to this remote outpost.  Seen above, the way to get there (apart from the rails themselves) was the small suspension bridge whose remnants are seen above.  This was a common way to connect the world with some of these remote substations found across the river.  It allowed a path to the living quarters of those who tended these substations and lived here during the times of Lines West.    When these photos were taken, now nearly 20 years ago, the graffiti on the old substation was far less than it is today.  Nonetheless, ...
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Hidden in the Trees

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 MP1613.1, Ravenna, MT.  Substation 9  I once met the man who owned the old Substation at Ravenna.  In one of those strange twists of history, so I'm told, it was supposed to be torn down and sold for scrap as the bricks had value.  But the original sale didn't work, the scrapper never came and it remains standing near the howling roar of I90 to this day. I90 is just one part of  the U.S. system that moves upwards of 90% of freight by truck and highway.  But tucked in amongst the tall pines like a mirage, Ravenna looks out blankly towards that interstate and shouts quietly back about a different time. The year was 1972 and General Electric had put together a unique proposal: completion of the electrified railway portion of the Milwaukee Road.  In a formal proposal, offered by GE itself ("Proposal for the Completion of the Electrified Railway Operation of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company") via the Locomotive Products De...
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The Place Where She Only Sleeps

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 Location: MP 1566.8 Grant-Kohrs Ranch Not far from Deer Lodge, headed west on the transcon we arrive here, at Grant-Kohrs Ranch where the Resourceful Railroad only sleeps.  Instead of empty right of way and scattered gravel, steel rail still binds the land in this place that is unlike the many other hundreds of miles along Lines West.  Across the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, on federal Park lands, the railroad only seems to rest and slumber while waiting for a new time to come.  Against the backdrop of Montana clouds that hold no rain, the catenary poles can still be found here standing against the endless skies.  The lineside poles that mark an era of railroading now gone still hold to the right of way.  It is not hard to imagine them whipping by outside the windows of an Olympian under the electrified power of a Quill or Joe.  Perhaps an XL Special could easily whisk across the scene above as though decades had never passed. Things don't seem so forgotten or ...
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Buried

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 Location:  Near Bear Mouth, MT 1603 miles west of Chicago The daylight is fading away in the photo above - in the space that has been cut by the Clark Fork River.  Here one finds the Milwaukee heading to Bearmouth, MT, making its way steadily west.  Still marking the path is the former NP (Montana Rail Link at the time this photo was taken) and not far away, empty tunnels that lie in unchanging darkness.  The searchlight signal of the old NP shows a high green along the steel rails still present, a lonely sentinel in a sad and lonely place. The signatures of Milwaukee were fading even during the time of this photo, now itself 20 years old.  The gravel road preserves what was the right-of-way but telegraphy and other markers were quickly falling even then.   Traveling along I90 is now a trip through forgotten history and gravesites.  Where bridges once crossed the old transcontinental, fill has taken their place.  No more insulator panels tha...
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Summer Skies and Fading Paint

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On the way out of Deer Lodge, the Milwaukee Road rolled west by a fuel rack and two depots that bounded it north and south.  To the south of the rails was the freight depot, shown above and below.  Note the telegraphy pole that rises through the roof at the west end.  One can scroll back through the decades online and find it, always present, rising right through the eve of the old freight house.   Those decades weren't kind to the old house either.  The white paint has washed and faded away, the wooden shingles are increasingly missing.  When these pictures were taken in the early 2000s, the end was very near.  To the north of the former main, the passenger depot has taken on a new life as a church, but no such rebirth has come to the old freight house.  Under the hot Montana sun, the remaining paint continues to fade away and soon the house, the loading dock, and the telegraphy pole that always seemed to rise through the roof will vanish from u...
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