Lost Rail

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...

  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...

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, ...

 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...

 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 ...

 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...

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...

  The year is 2007 and the location is Victoria, BC.  Via Rail is running a daily Budd RDC set as the Malahat  service on Vancouver Island.  It departs in the mornings from Victoria and heads up the island along the E&N (Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway) to Courtnay, a distance of about 140 miles.  To see Budd cars in operation as part of a daily passenger service is rare anytime in the 21st century.  By the time these two were captured, BC Rail's Budd cars had been gone for 5 years.   Captured here in 2007, the  Malahat  would cease operating as track deteriorated in the years that followed.  There has been talk of restoring the service, however, it seems that little progress has been made and these were on borrowed time.  The combined rail / path bridge that rolled the passenger train the last few hundred yards to the depot has also been redone, without the rails.  In 2011, the service was ended - reminding me of the axiom...

 The ATSF (former) mainline from Chicago races south and then turns west to meet the southwesterly running former CBQ at Galesburg, IL.  Not far west of its crossing of the Illinois River, the 'transcon' attacks Edelstein Hill, a continuous ~1% rise of about five miles in an otherwise flat Illinois countryside.  Up on top of the plains again, an afternoon hotshot from the early 2000s races west out of Chicago showing the era's mix of power and paint.   These were interesting days to watch the afternoon parade of containers and piggy-backs rolling west from Chicago.  Power varied from unpatched BN Cascade Green units to newer BN 'Executive Paint' MACs and these unique Santa Fe GP60s.  In this set, even a b-unit is helping to pull the tonnage west.  One of the early 'war pumpkins' is present on the point, showing the earlier green, orange and silver resplendent(?) with Santa Fe cigar band striping in Heritage II paint.  Many of these quickly faded t...

  When I first traveled to Deer Lodge, decades ago, I knew 'the Joe' was there.  That was in the early 2000s when only 20 years had passed since the transcon had been active and perhaps less than 30 years separated the venerable Joe from the point of an XL-special and a hustle across the Rocky Mountain Division.  Even that seems like a long time, until the passage of another 20 years goes by. Now still there, the enduring presence and unforgettable face of the Rocky Mountain Division still gazes with an unseeing 'quad.'  A static display if there ever was, it has received new paint over the years and even replica trolley lines overhead.  The years have given it company as well - a "Cities" painted Milwaukee Road E-8 rests nearby and a bay window caboose now resides with these fellow Milwaukee Road memories.  But the face of the Joe is unique and haunting.  Decades have passed between the photos, lifetimes even, but she endures.  

  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...