Before Erie

In 1953, a partnership between Alco and General Electric was ended and GE began the development of their first independent diesel locomotives.  The partnership had produced some memorable products like the Alco PA and FA as well as a number of the famous Alco road switchers.  The builder's plate on one of the first 'independent' GE products shows the build location of Erie, PA.  The U25B plate represents just one of thousands of locomotives manufactured within the Erie facility, destined for service at locations around the world.

Before these plates read "Erie," however, they read "Schenectady."  Such is the case with the last electric locomotive to operate on Milwaukee rails.  This is boxcab electric, E57B.  She rests in a small lot by US 12 on the way through Harlowton, MT.  She isn't styled like the famous GG1s that ran for years in the Northeast and she lacks the streamlining of the Milwaukee's own Little Joes.  By contrast, rivets are easy to spot in the sheet metal and the wooden framed door is clearly from a different period in manufacturing history.  Ironically, E57B served a longer career than either of those streamlined relations.  

Atop the many coats of faded paint on E57 is one more mark of its age and longevity: the builder's plate prominently displays Schenectady, NY.  The casting itself puts to shame the stickers that serve as today's builders plates.  

Ghosts and the Darkness

I remember well the first time I laid eyes on Harlowton.  The old horse and I (although at that time, we were both about a decade younger) rolled into town on US12 and stopped at a convenience store that overlooked the flour mill shown in the picture below.  The Montana day had heated well through the morning hours but I had learned years before that the best way to spend time outside was to avoid a/c completely.  If you never get used to being comfortable, then you never realize how uncomfortable you are.  So the old Suburban and I had opted for down windows and no compressor even as the day heated.  We shared the pain of the rising mercury together.

I reckon we were both a little different looking back then.  I seem to remember the silver paint on the old girl was just a little more glossy and had a little less wind and sun burn.  The engine had a few less miles on it too, and by that same token, so did I.  My hair was a bit thicker, there weren't funny lines around my eyes, and it didn't hurt to sit in the captains chair for hours at a time with the bow-tie on the grill pointed west.  Those were also days when we both had the time to do things like chase the ghosts of Hiawatha across Montana.

The suburban took gas (a lot less expensive then), and I took a drink and quick snack that would hold until I made it downtown for lunch.  I snapped the first picture of Harlowton with the Fuji Velvia that was loaded into the old Pentax (the picture in the prior post) and moved down to the old rail yards that the Milwaukee had left behind.  There are a few memories that still kick around those wind-blown flats, but the crash of coupling boxcars or the electric hum of traction motors aren't among them.  They have long since stopped echoing through the streets of the small town that overlooks this division point.

 

Historically, Harlowton was an important location for the Milwaukee Road, and an important locale for the State of Montana and Judith Basin country as well.  The Milwaukee wasn't the first to access the fertile wheat country of the "Golden Triangle," but when it did build into this land of sweetgrass, Harlowton was the access point.  Looking north in 2003, it's still easy to imagine that old line from the wheat fields rolling into town beneath the US 12 overpass.

For many towns in Montana's Judith Basin, the grain elevator and railroad siding have long been the heart of the economic life of  the area, especially during the months that grain harvests are readied for shipment. The origins and names of many of these towns dates back to the construction of ... the Milwaukee Road. [1]

Of course Harlowton was significant for other reasons as well.  The Rocky Mountain Division of the Milwaukee Road started here and with it, the the wires that would hang above the mainline all the way to Avery, ID on the far side of the Bitterroot Range.  The ribbons of steel from here west hosted some of North America's most famous locomotives.  Among these were the Boxcabs and Little Joes, but also the lesser-known Westinghouse Quills that preceded the Joes.

The economy here was highly dependent on the Milwaukee.  Indeed, the decline and abandonment of the railroad correlates to an ever decreasing population base.  In 1920 the census showed more than 5600 people within the city.  By 1970 the number had dropped to just over 2500 [2].  The final days of the Milwaukee here were reported by NBC on March 23, 1980.  75 employees were left in a town that once benefitted from Milwaukee payrolls of $2.5M per year [3].

Those are significant figures to ponder, and they parallel the experience of small towns and larger cities that dot the country from east to west.  Whether you can call it progress or not, change is inevitable.  The memorial sign hanging in front of the Harlowton Station marks the "Milwaukee Road Historic District" and lends further history of the line's impact on Montana and Harlowton.

On this day, as with all the others out on the Rocky Mountain Division, quiet is the rule.  The rail yards in Harlowton once proved vexing to visiting photographers because of the wires and poles that criss-crossed the rails below them.  That isn't a problem any more, the yards are open to the blue dome overhead while a sea of grasses beckon beneath.

A few memorials are left behind.  The old sanding tower is in place, and the water tower is easily seen nearby.  There are even the remains of a few of those catenary poles that made Little Joe photography such a difficulty.  Just a bit south of the old depot that serves as the centerpoint for the Historical District, the roundhouse stands as well.  The building is decrepit and falling, likely not long for this world.  It will soon follow the famous electrics into the history books, confined to pictures and stories just like the people and locomotives that were held within.

The old mainline leaves town just as it did years ago with insulator pads still hanging from the overpass above.  It's not hard to imagine the high green signals that greeted accelerating passenger trains or freights that were leaving Harlowton under electric power.  The electricity is a signature that is unique to the Milwaukee Road, and one that is still seen in unexpected places along the Lines West. 

On this day, lunch was had in one of the small cafes in downtown Harlowton.  The last electric locomotive to operate on the Milwaukee can be found close to US 12, so truck and I stopped to pay respects on our way west.  We were now in the land of substations and overhead wire, and the rest of the day would be spent documenting a few more of those remains as well.  I am convinced that the ghosts out along these places need to be remembered and their stories told.  These were dark times, and the sorrow that lingers is inescapable.  Perhaps in many ways, they still are.

 

The elders are gone from the city gate;

the young men have stopped their music [4].

1)  "Montana Wheat Towns Grew Up with the Railroad"  The Milwaukee Road Magazine.  September / October 1973 pg 8 (1973)

2)  "Wheatland county, montana - wikipedia, the free encyclopedia."  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheatland County, Montana. (Accessed 2012)
3)  "Shutdown in Harlowton MT," NBC News Broadcast. March 23 (1980)
4) Book of Lamentations 5:14 (NIV)

1335: A First Look

While hundreds of miles of Milwaukee's Pacific Coast Extension languished in relative obscurity, there were a few places of great fame.  1335 miles from Chicago's Union Station must be considered as one of those. 

This is Harlowton, MT - a site of large yards, engine facilities, connection point to the Northern Montana Lines and Golden Triangle, and start of the Western electrification.  Here the Little Joes flipped on their magnificent quads and headed west into the mountain ranges that lay ahead while eastbounds dropped off their electric motors and pushed east towards the plains and Badlands.

Harlowton was a town of great significance for the Milwaukee Road and the Milwaukee Road was of great significance to Harlowton.  This is the first look at MP 1335 where the trek west continues, this time 'under wire.'

Blue Shadows

In the lands of the western big sky, away from the mountains and the beautiful forests, just between ranges or out along the expanses of prairie, are lands where the sky hosts an unending play of constant change. No day is like any before, no night like any other to come.  When the explorers Lewis and Clark gazed out upon the vastness of the western prairies they remarked upon their beauty and wondered how God could have failed to put them in Virginia.

As the railroads bound the United States together, to these lands they also came.  The first through the Northwest was the Northern Pacific, followed by the Great Northern and then the Milwaukee Road.  The NP was built in stages that matched the ups and downs of the post Civil War economy.  Although it was the first to the Northwest coast, it did not have the advantage of improved materials or engineering practises like those afforded the Milwaukee Road, the late comer to the party.  Following its entry to Spokane, the NP turned southwest and ran across the Washington desert and scab land countries to Pasco.  From there it turned west and northwest to follow the Yakima River as it began a climb into the Cascade Range. 

The scab lands of central Washington are a sandy and rocky place, beutiful and unique among the western vistas.  Like the prairies that lie east of the Rockies, or the Palouse that lie to the west of the Bitterroots, the horizon line extends far and wide.  Sagebrush is common as are the dust devils that seem to spring from the earth on hot summer days.

At Lind, WA the first and the last transcons through this country cross each other.  The Milwaukee on a giant trestle that spans the coulee and the Northern Pacific itself. 

Though the Milwaukee is gone, today's NP hosts BNSF freights as well as the Empire Builder.  They slide by between the old piers that hoisted the "Resourceful Railroad" far overhead.  As the NP continues its trek south through the increasingly desert country it passes through the small outpost of Eltopia. 

There's a legend, or perhaps the truth, that Eltopia was first known as 'el to pay by the loco railroaders.  One evening an NP passenger train arrived in need of fuel and the only wood available was wet, soft cottonwood.  Now cottonwood burns cold, hardly the thing for steam.  This was a problem and a frustration for the crew and legend has it that the engineer said, "There'll be hell to pay for this."  And the name stuck.

A few years later, the quickly vanishing Cascade Green of the BN is highlighted in by the low sun of late afternoon.  The skies are quickly changing from the rich big sky blue to the darker shades of evening.  

As the sun sets, the skies again play out their ever changing colors on the large canvas that extends overhead.  Pastels will give way to bold oranges and reds, and as the ball drops, will return again to pastels and then star-filled darkness. 

 

 

But on this night, all across the western big sky country, the moon will rise in fullness and ride high through the midnight hours.  A constant companion for nighttime travellers, and a gentle echo of the sun it chases across the sky.  The eastbound Empire Builder will soon travel through the little Eltopia outpost, on its way to Spokane and the big cities that lie a thousand miles beyond.  Tonight the moon will glisten upon its stainless steel flanks and illuminate the landscape beyond the darkened windows.  At Lind, the piers of the Milwakee's old trestle will glow white against the desert landscape, illuminated by the full moon aloft.  Blue shadows abound.

Choice Mercies of Yesterday

Go back, then, a little way to the choice mercies of yesterday, and though all may be dark now, light up the lamps of the past, they shall glitter through the darkness, and thou shalt trust in the Lord till the day break and the shadows flee away. -- C. Spurgeon

The choice mercies of a yesterday, the fond memories that surface from the depths of times past.  These are special moments that go ever forward.  Included here are just a few of such memories from the summer of 2002.  The location is Central Illinois along the BNSF mains that radiate from the Chicago hub, the subject is Milwaukee's own 261, a 1944 Alco returned to service in 1993.

The Milwaukee Road 261 was born as a coal-fired 4-8-4 Northern in the midst of World War.  A few siblings of 261 were oil burners that spent their years running the 'gap' out in Eastern Washington and the Idaho Panhandle.  This bridged the two electrified components of the Milwaukee's Western Extension.  The 261 was held closer to the Midwest.  She shares similarities to another classic Northern locomotive design:  The Rock Island's R67.  Both shared the same running gear designs, allegedly due to war time design and manufacturing limitations.  

In the picture above and below, 261 is highballing the old CB+Q mainline just past Galva, IL.  The pictures recall the Saturday of the last weekend in June.  This is always the traditional "Galesburg Railroad Days" Festival weekend and the 261 was playing an active role that year.  It was corn growing weather that weekend with high heat and high humidity.  Legend has it that you can actually hear the corn 'creak' as it sprouts up in that hot summer sun.  Doubtless, the temperature inside the cab of the 4-8-4 was breathtaking.

On Sunday, the 261 left from Chicago and headed out along the old C+I line.  Below the 261 has just cleared Waterman, IL as she approaches one of the classic searchlight signals still in use in 2002.  The photographs are just a standard "wedge" composition but the big skies and lines of the 4-8-4 feel right at home on former CB+Q rails.  

After being turned, the 261 and train head back to the Union Station in Chicago.  It was fitting that the big Northern started and ended the days there on home rails.  Unlike prior outings, the passenger cars are nearly a matched set of classic Milwaukee Road passenger colors.  Across the system of yesteryear, these colors spanned thousands of miles through the Midwest and underwire to the West Coast.  

Truly, the restored 261 running without diesel help, was a rare highlight but details from that summer day caught several other elements that are becoming increasingly uncommon.  The target style signals have been replaced across the BNSF system and are now a rare find.  Likewise, the lineside poles that supported them and provided the old information link along the railroad are vanished as well.  For decades these elements defined the presence of a railroad just as much as track and ballast.  Over the past decade they have become difficult to find and their presence out across the old C+I line adds a classic feel to the day.  

Even the last train of the weekend is difficult to reproduce.  The red and silver of the locomotives is almost new and fresh by today's standards.  Likewise, the "War Pumpkin" paint on the second unit has yet to fade to the now typical pastel tones.  

These aren't exactly the "old days" or the "glory days" of railroading.  Still, the passing of years brings them into focus as old days in their own right.  They are choice mercies, worth reflecting upon when the shadows of night linger just a bit too long.  One can never go back again, but fortunately we can take the memories of hot summer days and corn growing weather ahead.

Silver Rails and Dark Territory

There was time in the early 1980s that the costs of the fuel crisis had been counted, the costs of failed mergers had run their course, and the deferred maintenance had overcome the original mainlines.  It was a dark time.  The end for the Rock Island was 1980. 

The end was not without its drama as even the bankrupt Milwaukee Road played a part.  In order to serve the steel industry at Wilton, the Milwaukee operated daylight hours over the eastern Iowa main.  A local operation, the Iowa Railroad, operated the nights.  The Iowa Railroad played a large role in preserving the mainline across the state as it helped maintain a continuous link from Omaha east.  In addition to farm commodities, this preserved service to the all important customer at Newton:  Maytag.  Many have speculated that it was Maytag more than anything else that saved this mainline from total abandonment.  For many years the company even owned rights to the old Rock Island corporate logos.

In 1984 the Milwaukee Road was out and a new regional was born that operated the full mainline to Omaha.  This new player, the Iowa Interstate, would prove to be a lasting presence and its colorful diesels have plied the rails ever since.  Over the decades, new birth has come to this old part of the Denver mainline.  In places, it is still obvious where the Rock's original double track used to be, but instead of jointed rail and sinking ballast, the Iowa Interstate has invested heavily in the physical plant.  Old telegraphy poles still dot the line to the horizons, but the rail is new, straight, and continuous weld.   As a nod to the past, the Interstate recently painted their own "heritage unit:" one of the new GE supercabs in Rocket Freight livery.  It's been decades since Alco FAs and EMD F units hustled freight dressed in Rocket Freight, but it has returned again. 

Though the story of the Iowa mainline is one of renewal and rebirth, ghosts of the old Rock Island linger.  From the Midwest to the Deep South and even the Southwest, the leftovers of abandonment decay with the passing years.  In West Branch, old block targets contrast with silver rails and GE supercabs, showing the other side of the Rock Island's legacy.  

Elevators and Gateways

December 19 has recently past, another day of the year that has come and gone as quickly as all the others.  It marks a significant day for the Milwaukee Road, however.  On December 19, the Road filed for its final bankruptcy, just before the holidays in 1977.  35 years ago now.  Just like the days, the years seem to slip by too quickly as well.

This is Ryegate, MT - 1306 miles from Chicago's Union Station.  Throughout the past year the wanderings posted on this blog have slowly moved across the state of Montana from Terry, at MP 1080, to the small little town of Ryegate.  Elevator row still stands here, and it's not hard to imagine a mainline of heavy rail running through the grasses that lie just to their north.  The picture looks west toward the next division on the Milwaukee's Lines West: the Rocky Mountain Division.  The next Milwaukee stop made on these pages will be Harlowton itself where the famous electric locomotives roamed.

Extensive attention has always been lavished upon the Rocky Mountain Division, and rightly so.  By contrast, however, the part of the country through which we've been travelling went relatively unnoticed.  It's a quiet country out here with beautiful skies and wonderful flat lands that traverse the horizons.  These lands east of Harlowton have amazing histories in their own right, and the scars left by the Milwaukee Road are no less fascinating nor tragic.

Harlowton itself is a natural point to break away from our travels west for just a brief period.  Until we arrive back on Milwaukee right of way, enjoy the pictures and stories of other lines and other times.  Harlowton will be right where it should be when we get back to the Resourceful Road's pacific extension.

Old Time Elegance

On November 28, 1905 the Milwaukee Road Board of Directors approved the the Pacific Extension to the West.  98 years later, a hot summer day finds Lavina, MT situated 1290 miles from Chicago out along the approved extension.

The remnants of that extension remain scattered on the ground at Lavina as the concrete signal base attests.  But like the other miles and miles of this reach west, the grasses have overtaken and now blow gently in the breezes of a hot summer afternoon.  No smell of baking creosote or hot ballast on this summer day.  This little town is actually "New" Lavina after being moved to the present location when surveyors for the Milwaukee Road plotted the mainline through this part of Montana [1].  The old town and its stage coach stop were left behind to welcome the station calls of trains traversing the Pacific Coast Extension.

In the background of the Milwaukee's mainline rests The Adams Hotel, an interesting story in itself.  Built as a center of elegance and social activity, it has spanned the decades from 1908 to present.  Like much of the newly settled West, the first few years were good but the droughts and depressions of the 1930s ended its run of elegance.  Over the years it served various purposes with restoration starting just prior to this photo taken in 2003.

The big school house of Vananda and The Adams Hotel both tell the story of the railroad's importance  to the communities it created and served.  It brought hope and played the part of a bright promise for tomorrow.  Today Lavina has a population of 182 and joins the many other quiet and small places left behind when the Resourceful Railroad left town.

1) http://www.co.golden-valley.mt.us/html/lavina.html

They Return Once Again

2189:  The miles from Chicago's Union Station to Seattle, WA.  At one time, 656 of them electrified and served by two transcontinental passenger trains, the Olympian and the Columbian.  In 1948 The Columbian, train 18, departed Seattle at 22:30 every evening and arrived in Chicago at 8:45am, the morning of the third day.  The Olympian Hiawatha operated on a more limited schedule and completed the same traverse in only 45 hours [1].  Between the two end points of the line were 5 mountain ranges, two sections of electrification, and ever changing geography.  Leaving for the big eastern cities, the trains traversed the the sub-tropical rain forests of the Cascades where precipitation amounts climb toward 100 inches per year [2].  Then to the rain shadows of the Central Washington desert where small outcroppings of people had settled when the new rail line built west.  The Palouse and the Bitterroots followed and were chased by the Rockies of Central Montana and the rain shadow that lies to their east.  Then the wheat fields of the Montana plains, the Badlands, and the Dakotas where the land rolls between the rivers that meander across the great plains.

Leaving Seattle at 22:30, the eastbound Columbian received passengers at the small outpost of Corfu at 3:50a.  By the time the timetables here were published in 1948, Corfu had been reduced to a station without agent, but the images from the first days are stunning.  The track is ever straight and evidence of new construction is everywhere.  Our friends at Big Bend Railroad History have offered several of these early twentieth century images over the past months.

These haunting photos show a beginning.  They show the beginning of the Resourceful Road itself and the culmination of the Lines West dream.    To the passengers who roll by on the eastbound passenger trains, it is the beginning of a passage of thousands of miles and multiple days.  The outpost of Corfu, situated in the midst of a nighttime desert, flips by outside the window with probably little thought; another small town and another stop for the "unlimited" Columbian.  In the electrified years, the locomotives would switch at Othello and provide a far more interesting service stop and chance for a "leg stretch" anyway.  Still, to little towns like Corfu, the Columbian was the lifeline to the outside world.

Further east along this lifeline, the Columbian would call at large and small towns alike.  Missoula, Butte, and Harlowton to name a few.  The little town of Roundup was scheduled for 2:16a, a full 735 miles to the east.  Unlike the pictures of the new Corfu, these pictures of Roundup show the end.  The passenger trains that are seen rolling through Washington desert have long ago called at Roundup and arrived at Chicago.  The dream of Lines West  that is shown in one hundred year old Corfu images survives today as a fading shadow in the points of call like Roundup.  The depot is used for utility work while, hidden in the tall grasses, old signal bases show no aspect to east bound passenger trains and travelers.  Just like the trains themselves, these completed their journey long ago.

In different times, it was possible to stand on the platforms of the newly constructed Corfu station, board the Columbian heading east, and arrive in Roundup for the cattle drives that gave the community its name.  Now Cofu is dust, and Roundup serves as a quiet reminder of the way all things must return once again.  At Roundup, 2:16 in the morn comes again and again with no hiss of air brakes, no whirl of a/c fans, and no Columbian that calls.

"What profit has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun?  One genration passes away, and another generation comes; But the earth abides forever.  The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, And hastens to the place where it arose.  The wind goes toward the south, And turns around to the north; The wind whirls about continually, and comes again on its circuit.  All the rivers run into the sea, Yet the sea is not full; To the place from which the rivers come, There they return again."  Ecclesiastes 1: 3-7

[1] Amtrak's Empire Builder traverses Seattle to Chicago in 46 hrs.
[2]http://www.theweatherprediction.com/weatherpapers/118/index.html

Pieces of a Story

 

 Just about 1265 miles from the bustling Union Station, Chicago the middle of Montana reveals a few more pieces of a story.  This is Roundup, a town named for yearly cattle roundups from the surrounding ranch lands. 

The Miles City Mercantile outpost still stands in Roundup.  Like so much old industry, the Mercantile was built to last and stands straight and level throughout.  The company was founded in 1916, soon after the Milwaukee traversed these parts.  As a company, its present status is listed as 'inactive' but  memories from a few employees interviewed over the years shed a bit of light on the old company and its breadth [1].  The mercantile had locations in many of the Milwaukee towns that dotted the Central Montana plains.  Towns like Winnett,  Grass Range, Roundup and others.  The times were different: where wild grasses grow today, boxcars were spotted on steel rails that represented a figurative and literal unbroken connection sea to sea.  "Men of the road" were hobos that stood on the back platforms looking for dented cans and other handouts from gracious employees. 

 

Other old industry stands by in Roundup as well.  The once ubiquitous wooden grain elevator is disappearing across the West and Midwest - but a few ghosts like the one above still stand looking out across the land they have scoured for decades.  The gaping windows, broken ladders, and missing rails all speak to the same story and provide their own chapters to to this tale of what happened those many years ago.  It's a story that's as seemingly large as the state through which we currently traverse, with players that extend well beyond the old railroad itself.

[1]  Roundup Record-Tribune & Winnett Times - Jul 26, 2006

Musselshell Graveyard

Slowly, ever so slowly, the dry and harsh plains of eastern Montana begin to yield  to a new land that will soon reveal itself to westbound travelers.  The Musselshell river makes its appearance rolling west - and the cuts that it has made in the landscape introduce a rockiness that was missing through the plains of Ingomar and Vananda.

The journey west has been filled with the solemn feeling of an industrial graveyard.  It is a feeling of a missing 'hustle' or purpose that seems so close, and at the same time, so distant from the present.  Time continues to erode this graveyard in real and figurative ways.  Through the summer of 2011 massive rains to this part of Montana did heavy damage to the old Resourceful Railroad.  Bridges are missing and fills are washed away.  Further north along the Milwaukee's wheat lines to the Golden Triangle, the large trestle over the Judith River now lists across the center spans.  Its foundations have eroded and it awaits funding for repair that will likely never come.

In times past, teams of railroad men and machinery would have quickly bolstered the eroding fills and buttressed the bridges that served as the lifeline to the transcon.  Fresh ballast would now be in place, and a year later, slow orders lifted as freight from the Pacific Rim journeys east to the big markets of the Midwest and East Coast.  The stark, stark contrast between those "what ifs" and the present reality make the Musselshell graveyard a gloomy place indeed.  There are a few places where it seems rails could simply be relaid, sadly this is no longer among them.

Living in the Promised Land

The long, sweeping curve into Ingomar, MT highlights the Milwaukee Road's entrance into this small town out on the Montana plains.  The photo above looks east, back toward the places and spaces already traveled, and to those beyond the start of abandonment at Terry.  Ingomar itself is one of the few survivors that exists out along an old US highway and this abandoned transcon.  The streets are gravel and the shops few but nonetheless, Ingomar holds on.

Ingomar was one of the towns plotted by the railroad as it headed west in 1908.  As with many of the other small towns plotted by the Milwaukee Road, it was to serve as a hub for the local settlers and an access point to the railroad's growing empire that stretched to the east and west.  Looking south along the main street, the US flag still flies high on this hot summer day in 2003.  It marks the Jersey Lilly - one of the local watering holes left over from a time of grander intents.

The station still stands at Ingomar as a converted residence and is still lined closely to the old mainline that strikes through the north side of town.  Also left behind is an old Milwaukee tender, likely from an S2 Northern steam locomotive.  The classy white stripping and outline of the tilted emblem are clearly visible as the relic sits in the weeds just off the main.  The story goes that water was supplied to the town by the Milwaukee Road when potable water could not be found [1].  Although no longer in use today, it stands as an unexpected and haunting reminder of the steel machines that used to traverse these promised lands. 

Losing the Fight

Location:  Vananda, MT
MP:  1181.5 Miles from Chicago

The same hot summer day that has accompanied the journey west continues at Vananda, MT.  Here, there are two things that bear witness to the old town - the house above and an impressive brick school just out of photo to the left.  The dry weather of Central Montana has aided in keeping them  standing but it's clear they are losing the fight.  Also out of picture and behind the camera is the Milwaukee's right of way through Vananda.  Of course the Milwaukee lost the fight many years ago and has hastened the demise of places like Vananda ever since.

Is it a long road to obscurity or a simple, straight path? The Milwaukee existed out on these plains for almost 70 years, a lifetime.  Its building ignited a new interest in railroads and a final run of settlers out onto these great expanses of grassland.  What would follow were hard times.  The drought of the 1930s, the Dust Bowl, and the collapse of institutions across the nation represent what author Timothy Egan titled, "The Worst Hard Time."  Though the dust bowl of Kansas and Oaklahoma didn't quite reach the plains here, the hardships of the time did.

By the early 1980s, the railroad and small towns like Vananda had seen two World Wars, several conflicts and economic downturns, and were weathering the realities of an energy crisis and another malaise economy.  In the end, the Milwaukee's 70 years seems like a long time - until those years become a lifetime and the road to obscurity reveals itself as being all too short.  In some ways the quiet that is out on these plains, nearly 1200 miles from a bustling Chicago Union Station, is a peacefulness that marks defeat.

Walking in Old Ways

"Stand in the ways and see, And ask for the old paths, where the good way is, And walk in it" Jerimiah 6:16

On August 12, 1978 the Milwaukee Board of Directors announced their intent to abandon the Pacific Coast Extension. The final abandonment would come after an initial embargo in 1979, a brief reprieve, and then a final shutdown in 1980. Moving west only slightly from the previous photo brings us to the high summer sun of a 2003 day, 25 years after that regrettable announcement. US 12 has been working west with the old mainline since leaving Forsyth and the sun is climbing higher into the skies, yielding unfriendly lighting and harsh pictures of this old way west.

The small girder bridge that still links east and west in this photo is all part of a line that looks as though rails could simply be relaid and trains could run in a matter of weeks. It's interesting to compare this thought to the numbers being thrown around by states like California and companies like Amtrak to develop high speed rail (HSR). The line pictured above was well used for passenger travel in times past (and it wasn't so slow). The Milwaukee operated varnish like the Olympian here. Pulled by locomotives like the 4-6-4 "Baltics" that held the point directly from the Twin Cities straight through to Harlowton. It was the longest continuous run for an equipment set in the U.S. at the time. Right here on this little girder bridge that still stands as a connection point for the path of old.

Despite the harsh colors and sub-prime time of day for photography, the above photo remains a personal favorite. I think the simplicity of the bridge, locked in place for decades past and decades to come, strikes an interesting tone.

Day from Night

The separation of light from dark is a daily event, marking the beginning and end of  daylight hours and the transition into the darkness of night.  The two never truly cross paths, but transition with the entry and exit of the sun into the skies overhead.  Days full of sunshine seem to instill some bit of hope, especially after long periods of rain or unbroken cloud.  By contrast, nights seem unshakably dark.  The moon occasionally rides high and illuminates the landscape in eerie blue shadows, but for the most part, nights are dark -- an uncomfortable thing compared to the light that chases it away.

So fundamental is this balance and our appreciation of light our vernacular includes expressions like, "dawning of a new day" or "age."  And despite the presence of darkness for half of a 24 hour period, we yet refer to these as a day. 

It is also true, however, that not all dawns bring with them hope no matter how brightly the sun shines.  These are days when a "John Wayne Moment" never happens.  These are stories where the night settles and refuses to leave, forever separating itself from the hopeful dawn of something new and better.  The trek west along the Milwaukee Road's Pacific Extension continually brings to mind one of these darker stories.  Near MP 1175 the right of way is still discernible as a gentle rise in the ground. Time has made it difficult to see, but it still rolls by in the distance behind the large tree.  The gentle curve of the right of way here belies the original design of the railroad and its  transcontinental purposes.  On this day, the grasses cover it well in warm Montana sun while they gently sway in the breezes that traverse these plains. 

Despite these warm summer tidings, night has settled here and does not relinquish her grip.  The promise of sunrise and a new day for the old railroad seems distant and forgotten.  The John Wayne Moment never happened and daylight has seemingly fled.  The quiet that has replaced the things that were is only one of many cues that we journey westward in an unending night.