Lost Rail

Before taking leave from the Midwest and pursuing the abandoned transcon of the Milwaukee Road, I knew the Santa Fe's own road west quiet well.  Well, to be completely accurate, I knew the BNSF Transcon through Illinois quite well.  A decade ago there were still quiet a few traces of ATSF to be found, however.  Warbonnets were found with some regularity, some even "unpatched" and wearing their original Santa Fe numbers and heralds. Edelstein Hill was a favorite spot of mine to watch trains roll out on the high iron.  This grade up out of the Illinois River Valley was harsh, and steepest on the line anywhere east of the western mountains.  The surrounding Midwestern landscape was typical but beautiful.  Fields of corn in the summer gave way to winter browns and then white winter snows as temperatures plummeted.  These pictures are just a few taken one winter afternoon during an Illinois snowfall.  One of the most striking things about fresh s...

Many, many miles ago, it was a dry and hot summer in the Eastern Montana Badlands.  The land was baked in the heat of the arid day.  I had come this way to see what was left and to track the remains westbound across the state, following the old Milwaukee Road along the course laid out many years before.  It was a day about as far removed from December as possible, and yet, a day that was inexorably linked nonetheless.    December 6, 1960 saw the Milwaukee Road file an ICC "train off" petition for it's famed Olympian Hiawatha.  There would be no more Super Domes to the Emerald City, and the remnants of the service would be cut back to Deer Lodge before a complete annulment.  There would be no more scheduled passenger service over some of the best engineered railroad on the continent, maybe the world.  The rising Saddle Mountains from the Columbia River basin, the Cascades, the Bitterroots, all would be left to the haunts of freight trai...

In the years of railroading's past, holidays and holiday meals were something of an event.  Those were curious days by today's standards:  dining cars employed chefs who cooked on stoves and ovens using fresh ingredients from along the way.  The Northern Pacific, for example, restocked dining cars with fresh fruit from Central Washington as trains made their way through.  Railroads had their own recipes that made their dining cars famous and specialties that set them apart from competitors.  Moving people was important, and the business of railroading reflected that. The holidays had their own menus in many dining cars, reflecting the best meals for travelers who found themselves out on the rails.  For many years, even Amtrak changed its regular meal plan to offer special holiday turkey for Thanksgiving.  The picture above reflects one such holiday specialty: Alaskan Railroad Cranberry Pie.  It is a thing of beauty, and has become a tradition f...

  Location:  Spring Creek Trestle, near Lewistown, MT.  2005 Big events change things quickly, but the accumulation of small changes mark the years and decades just as effectively.  The sun comes up and the sun goes down: one day leads to the next as a mix of change. Every so often, there appears just a few years of stability when the reliability of the status quo seems unshakable.  Recently the expectation of burgeoning productivity and expansive wealth have been questioned, though for years they marked the American Dream.  Cheap energy was a hallmark of the U.S. as was its ability to manufacture products for domestic and global consumption.  For years the railroads owned the landscape and mail was always delivered by RPO car.  Today the RPO is long gone, and the unique Saturday delivery that as marked the USPS seems destined to follow it into history as well.  Many of the towns that were served by these institutions are depleted or vanish...

There was a time, now many years ago, when there was a different economic malaise, a different energy crisis, and a different set of hard choices.  For the Milwaukee Road, this energy crisis of the mid-seventies produced an interesting result:  the decision to maintain electrified operations across the Rocky Mountains through June of 1974.  The original plan had the juice turned off in 1973 so this represented a stay of execution, but not a lasting reprise.  For reasons that are not always clear, the electrification was turned off and the Milwaukee Road turned to newer diesel power for its trains across the Rockies. Ironically, the final costs of new diesel locomotives to replace the scrapped electrics, combined with  ever increasing fuel costs of the energy crisis, cost the Milwaukee dearly.  Detailed studies of this decision, as well as original GE economic analysis can be found here .    Particularly troubling is evidence that the Milwaukee a...

At the peak of railroading in the United States, over 250,000 miles of track crossed the continent (source: ICC) .  More than 180 Class 1 Railroads were operating by 1930 (AAR) .  The next 80 years would see a dramatic reduction in these numbers, brought about through rationalization of duplicate lines, corporate mergers, and outside pressures like affordable air travel and the Interstate system. Often left behind are remnants of these original companies and rail lines.  They exist in large cities and small towns alike.  Dearborn Station in Chicago still stands, but the multitude of railroads that used it daily are gone as are the tracks and station platforms.  Shops and a small park now take their place.  Countless abandoned grain elevators still dot small towns where tracks used to connect them.  A few still offer storage and service via trucking, but more are just silent hulks.  Large or small, these are relics of that railroading peak 80 ye...

The year is 2005 and a hot summer's day finds the photographer with Velvia slide film and an old Pentax camera pointed Railroad East.  The blues and greens that are captured by Fuji's high saturation  film disguise the 100 degree temperatures and hot breeze that reside in this western mountain valley.  To the left and right, the old Northern Pacific mainline to Northwest Coast enters and exits frame.  In 2005 the NP is home to the Montana Rail Link and its unique fleet of sd45s , a few remaining semaphore signals, and (as always) a close proximity to America's Resourceful Railroad. This is Huson, MT.  Huson was located at milepost 1662.2 on the Milwaukee Road - just over 1660 miles from Chicago's Union Station.  The Milwaukee's mainline to the West Coast lies directly ahead of the camera and under foot in this 2005 photograph.  The feeder lines to the Milwaukee's network of substations and overhead DC power still mark the old right of way's northern ...