Lost Rail

  With the run through Racetrack and Morel behind it, the mainline arrives in Deer Lodge, above looking railroad-east.  The street names of Railroad and Milwaukee still belie the old transcon's presence even decades after its departure and fade.   In the harsh mid-afternoon sun, looking east, we would find ourselves looking toward the start of the Deer Lodge yard throat just beyond the elevator complex in the photo above.  The  arial view  shows the same elevator at the top of the photo, this time looking roughly railroad-west.   These difference of decades of photos always capture me.  They speak to something eternal that objects to the decay and change presented.  The passing of generations and memories seems unmistakably foreign to that piece in each of us that remains timeless.  It changes over the years, it becomes more than it was, but it never seems to age like everything around it.  Fighting against the futility, this eterna...

In the run from Butte west, the path turns north.  The NP and I-90 are ever close at hand and the Route of the Hiawathas splits bluffs and ranges to the east and west in its northbound trek.  Deer Lodge is near, and with it the larger yard and engine facilities that are the first since leaving Harlowton back at milepost 1335.  Here, between Butte's station at MP 1522 and Deer Lodge at 1562 the range lands look green in the early summer that promises cool rain later in the day.   Though it is not difficult to find photos of the Olympian Hi from the western reaches of the Milwaukee's empire, its time with the Road was brief.  1961 would be the last year for the train to operate fully from Chicago to Seattle / Tacoma.  The train that remained in its place would terminate at Deer Lodge and go no further, and in 1964 would go no further west than South Dakota [1].  Western passenger trains, even of the Amtrak era, have a special feel because the great expan...

  Rolling through the Deer Lodge Valley in Powell County, MT, the transcon gets ever closer to the major roundhouses and yard at Deer Lodge itself.  Near Morel it continues its westbound, straight as an arrow shot through the big skies that lie between Montana's western mountain ranges.  The Rockies behind, the Bitterroots ahead and nothing but endless skies above.   These skies bring the hope of a warm spring day, the sunshine that accompanies a Chinook wind, and the storms that blow snow and rains horizontal.  They are skies of hope and skies of dread, skies of light and skies of darkness all played out on a canvas that can never be well described.  Decades have passed since the orange and black rolled beneath these very skies.  Though different with every passing moment, they yet appear timeless as the world of men changes beneath them.   Near the old transcon a single room building rests in a valley field.  Surrounded by rusted barbwire f...

  MP 1544.8 - near Morel, MT As the last transcon built in the United States bisected its way across the mountainous state of Montana, not far from Deer Lodge, it arrived here near Morel.  Just about 1545 miles from the imposing granite of Chicago's Union Station it is found littered with the decaying evidence of something gone wrong.   How frustrating to wander the halls of great and massive railroad stations or sit in the small waiting rooms of others and know without doubt that there used to be 'a way.'  There used to be a ticket to be purchased, a train to catch, and a place to go.  It wasn't hard to head to places with names like Harlowton, Miles City, Three Forks, Butte, Deer Lodge, Spokane, Othello, Seattle, Tacoma and all of those intermediate stops.   But here near Morel, in this run of mainline miles between mountain ranges where speeds could be high and great open expanse of Montana and its huge skies surround the Resourceful Road the ever presen...

  The date was Friday, November 7, 1919 and at the GE plant in Erie, PA a new electric locomotive was undergoing demonstration in front of railroad reps assembled by GE [1].  The viewers included representatives from multiple US Railroads, two Canadian lines and a variety of others.  The locomotive in question was one of the first Milwaukee Bi-Polar types, 10251.   The EP-2 Bi-Polars were monsters, with a total weight of 530,000 lbs and up to 86% of that weight atop the drivers.  That compared very favorably to steam locomotives of the time.  A Mohawk of the same vintage achieved only 68% of total weight on drivers.  10251 effectively bested one of these famous 4-8-2s plus another 4-6-2 coupled together that day.  Most of their lives were spent on the electrified Coast Division of the Milwaukee Road, running the line between Othello and Tacoma across the State of Washington.  In their charge were the passenger trains that ran across the Casca...

 Milepost:  1535.7  Finlin, MT Heading west from Butte we parallel the Butte Anaconda and Pacific and then keep pushing further west as it drops away behind us.  Looking back, the Rockies are seen as a compilation of layers forming the horizon line.  The varying shades of darkness give depth and great expanse to the scene from the old right of way near Finlin, MT.  We are nearly 1540 miles form Chicago's Union Station, have crossed multiple mountain ranges and found ourselves in the shadows of old stations and substations both large and small.  In these fields near Finlin, the old telegraphy and AC power lines seemingly fortify the old transcon on either side.  Look carefully in the distance of these two photos and you can see them sweep slowly away in broad curves as they fade in the distance.  The photo above looks south on this small stretch of north-south running, the photo below looks north. It is only a small stretch of north-south main...

  Sometimes it's not hard to imagine the way things were as we stand in the presence of what remains.  It's an uneasy feeling: to know that  everything  is set and right - but for the timing.  The location is right: the corn grows in the fields as it seemingly always has, warm summer days roll across the lands and in the distance, the Erie Railroad RX Round Lake Interlocking stands against the sky.  The only thing wrong is the year on the calendar.  Right place, wrong time. Standing above these cornfields of a late summer in Indiana, near the town of Laketon, rise these remains of the RX Round Lake Interlocking.  It's the haunt of old passenger trains like the Lake Cities and Phoebe Snow, the place where 20 cylinder SD45s hauled piggybacks with supporting E8s that were kicked down from passenger service when that ended.  Instead of an east-west mainline beneath the great signals there are only weeds, trees, and a familiar empty feeling. It's ...

Decades ago, it was a time when a large and powerful few were still a small and local many.  These would consolidate, merge, and slip away until what is found today are huge and encompassing.  In communication they are the AT&T and Verizons.  In retail they are the Amazons and Walmarts, the Lowes and the Home Depots.  In railroads, the Norfolk Southern and CSXT in the east, Union Pacific and BNSF in the west.   A few others exist in and around these behemoths as well, like Kansas City Southern, Iowa Interstate and numerous short lines, although KCS has grown aggressively in and out of country.  Even now it looks to a merger with CN and has already assimilated the Meridian Speedway and works closely with Norfolk Southern moving containers across the I20 corridor between Shreveport and Atlanta.   The bigness of what we see about us today hide the stories of the smaller and unique things that came before them.  Indiana was known for an impressive...

With the Rockies as backdrop, Butte begins its fade from view as the transcon heads west.  The tower of the station is framed by the lone railroad structure that still marks the way out of town.   Another perspective below shows the tracks of the Butte Anaconda and Pacific still marking the path.    In the dry heat of a 2003 summer day, when this set of photos was taken, the fade of America's last transcon doesn't seem all that irreparable.  Surely it wouldn't be hard to get some steel relaid?  Two decades on, 20 more years of fade, and the cruelty of life is setting in with increasing finality: once we've lost something, it's not coming back. When the Milwaukee started its grand enterprise west, it was the Chicago Milwaukee St. Paul and Pacific.  Following one of its several bankruptcies, it emerged as the Milwaukee Road.  The tilted rectangle was always the symbol, but the graphics and lettering would change through the years.  Hidden in pl...

  What can weeds and platforms tell us?  In the weeds are relics of an old empire of electric power.  The stubs of catenary poles peak out just above the wild flowers and brush.  On the ground, a path of concrete still defies the ages and arcs out and away from the old Butte station whose tower rises against the Rockies.  Adventures and journeys started and ended here, the fears of men and women and the courage in their face played out daily in the lives that intersected those old days.   Though we spend much of our day acting as our own gods, signs like these remind us that the world has kept spinning forward.  We are not gods at all, but mortals who spend but a few days beneath the sun.  Though we think very highly of ourselves, we forget our weaknesses.  The relics here remind us of those fears and weaknesses, while the mountains look on in a timeless pose that is always present.   Unlike the mountains, the named passenger trains have...

Location: Butte, MT As the years pass there are fewer marks of the Resourceful Railroad left across the American West.  The long stretches of right of way between mountain passes seem ever disappearing; the relentless work of nature and men slowly reclaiming the spaces.  Despite this ongoing loss, there are still a few lasting monuments that point backwards.  The most famous of Butte's two Milwaukee Road passenger stations still stands as one of these lasting gifts. Shown here in photos that are themselves twenty years old, it is the home of KXLF and, reportedly, still ordained with the marble floors that were all part of the Milwaukee Road's grand entrance to the city.  In addition to KXLF, the names that adorn the station in the early 2000s include another name that has lost ground to history: Rainier.     One can never walk through these old places or gaze upon the old photos without remembering the vast depth of history that has unfolded before us. ...