Summer Skies and Fading Paint
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 under these blue skies. To the north