Wanna take a train ride with me?

Well, not me, exactly. But the line I worked in Montana - from Helena to Sandpoint and into Post Falls, Idaho.



The ride from Helena starts at about 55 minutes in.

This is a series of videos spread over 35 years...the reason being, Montana Rail Link has been merged out of existence. The BNSF Railway purchased it, or re-purchased it, sort of. The line was founded in 1987 when the Burlington Northern (predecessor to the BNSF) applied to the ICC to abandon the former Northern Pacific line (a predecessor to the Burlington Northern) from Idaho to Billings. Local construction magnate Dennis Washington (who is white, BTW) made an offer to buy the line, and run it. He got his political cronies involved, and in due course, he had leased the line, and had the rights to run it as a Class II (regional) railroad.

Most of these attempts fail; but the MRL was a great success. Probably because of the well-worded contract in the lease - MRL was basically a "bridge line" that connected with the BN at both ends. Meantime, there were small industries that wanted rail service.

And it was good. Smaller sometimes is better. The personal touch.

The West grew, and the nation's rail system became a bridge for intermodal shipping...Newark to Long Beach or Seattle. The BNSF and Union Pacific have, or had, all they could handle; and were routing trains over MRL, and paying us to run them.

They wanted to increase capacity. The BNSF "High Line" through Kalispell, up through Havre and on to Williston, is triple-tracked now. The old Northern Pacific, single-track with passing sidings. Since Dennis didn't own the track, only leased it, there was no motivation for MRL to lay a second main line - which will involve a LOT of work.

BNSF wanted. For 20 years they'd been pressuring Dennis Washington to sell or re-organize to fold MRL into the BNSF. He's resisted.

Now he's approaching 90 and his kids are...from what I hear, they're like Hunter Biden. So Dennis is giving up. He made a cool couple of billion, in breaking the lease.

So the rail buffs are doing tributes to Montana Rail Link.

As you can see, the scenery is breathtaking. A lot of that old equipment, I was using. SD-40-2 locomotives were still MRL's backbone, although BNSF run-through power was GE Evo stuff. You'll see some SD-7s and SD-9s in there; those are gone; but there were still about four GP-9s dating to 1955.

Those got scrapped last year.

Just thought some folks might like to see the land, if nothing else. And get some idea of how a railroader works, on the road.