Lost Rail

The vast spaces of the Great Plains are a barren and unforgiving landscape, but beautiful in their starkness and profound in their emptiness.  This photo of Southwest Kansas is Dustbowl territory, and on this particular day it feels like it:  sustained winds of 40mph and temperatures of 100 degrees. Lost in this sea of emptiness is a lonely old branch of Santa Fe origin.  It is a thin ribbon that still plies these great plains, connecting what is left of the small towns beneath hot and endless skies.

Some have offered the roaring 20s as the "Golden Age" of U.S. passenger rail.  The famous named trains that were born from this general era are numerous and memorable.  The 20th Century Limited, the Broadway Limited, the Phoebe Snow, the Chief, and Golden State Limited are only a few of these famous trains that arrived during the first quarter of the twentieth century.  Long forgotten are the innumerable unnamed trains that existed only as numbers, but branched out from the country's main lines and connected the small towns and places scattered off the beaten paths.  Many of these were mixed freights, comprised of only a passenger car or two and freight cars that were switched at the small towns along the way.  At its peak during WWII, the U.S. passenger train network accounted for 90 billion passenger miles.   Like the other railroads across the United States, The Milwaukee Road took an active roll in passenger railroading's golden age.  Grand statio...

To the west, the tops of the Rocky Mountains peak above the end of prairie land in Big Sky Country.  Not far from here, a parade of RVs and sightseers make their way to Glacier National Park, nestled in beautiful mountain wilderness.  That was Great Northern territory.  For the Milwaukee Road, the end of the line in Montana was here - at Agawam. The Golden Triangle area of Montana was one of the most lucrative on-line revenue producers for Lines West.  Fleets of Ribside boxcars and Federal Yellow hoppers rolled from these plains to the mainline at Harlowton.  At Agawam, two elevators still mark this end of track.  Grasses grow thick among the ruins here, as cars old enough to remember days of orange and black plying light rail rest beside them.  There are a few places out along the haunts of the Milwaukee Road where visitors can see time - and Agawam is one of them. Many have marveled at the beauty of God's creation in the Rocky Mountains just to t...

It's been a few years now, but there was a time not so long ago when solid sets of 20 cylinder diesel locomotives could be found pouring their guts out doing what they always did best.  Even further back than that, these beasts could be found on railroads across the entire U.S.  When these pictures were taken the year was 2005 and there were but a few remaining daily users.  The SD-45 (and its close relative, the F45) was quite a machine, and Montana Rail Link used them as they were always intended, even in their fifth decade of service.   "Hustle Muscle" was the nickname applied to first SD-45, owned by the Great Northern.  Other nicknames have included flare-45 because of the unique flared radiators at the rear of the unit.  These flared radiators were necessary to provide the extra cooling capacity for the large 20-cylinder diesel that EMD installed under the long hood.  The 20 cylinder diesel made only a brief appearance in the EMD lineup and sa...

The pages of many books are filled with images of America's final Transcontinental railroad.  They show high mountains and electric locomotives from the West, or perhaps vast corn fields and grain trains from the Midwest.  Streamlined Hiawathas that were photographed at speed through Wisconsin countryside are reproduced faithfully.  Little Joes engaged in an assault on the Bitterroots show the grittiness of a heavy mountain railroad as sand flies from around the running gear.  Wherever the locale or whatever the subject, most of the images recall a Milwaukee Road that doesn't look anything like this:  the Badlands. The Badlands are a harsh environment.  Filled with dry sage and dry hills, these inhabit eastern Montana as part of the Milwaukee's journey west.  Shown in the above photo, the Resourceful Road crosses the Yellowstone River at Kamm, MT into a big sky beset with the pastel colors of a dipping summer sun.  Soon the cool of night will e...

March 9 is an important date in Milwaukee Road history.  In 1908 on this date the first train arrived in Harlowton, MT from the East.  Harlowton would become a small town of major importance to the Milwaukee, and Central Montana as well. Here at Harlowton, the Milwaukee would construct a large yard and engine facility.  The line to the Golden Triangle would originate from the east-west main here at Harlowton, providing the outlet for wheat crops to reach far away markets.  Other shipments from the areas north of Harlowton worked their way south as well including oil from the Lewistown area.   Harlowton was also the beginning of the Rocky Mountain Division for trains heading west.  Here in the big yards, the famous electric locomotives that defined the Milwaukee's Mountain operation for decades would be swapped in and out.  March 1908 marked the beginning.  In a bit of irony, March 1980 marked the end of the Milwaukee's operations across the...

Milwaukee memories abound in this photograph of a hot summer day in St. Maries, ID.  Two GPs that trace their lineage back to days of orange and black stand ready to haul empty log cars to the reload.  The log cars themselves can trace their heritage back to the Milwaukee.  Even one of switchstands among the many yard tracks still bears the chevron markings of its former owner.  Pictured here is the St. Maries Railroad in its final summer as a log hauler, 2009.  It's a hot day, and the rising heat is captured through the lens of a big telephoto.  The final image is distorted, but says "summer time" just as clearly as the smell of creosote.  Though the St. Maries RR remains in place to haul wood products from producers in St. Maries to the Union Pacific connection at Plummer Junction, the days of ancient log cars traversing the Elk River Branch are over.  The flats have been torched, and the line south of St. Maries is quiet but for the continuo...