Montana Railroading and Railfanning In "Big Sky Country"

Montana railroading is historically renowned for breathtaking open vistas and lots of grain and other agriculture-related train movements. While Montana’s official nickname is The Treasure State it is perhaps best known as Big Sky Country, and for good reason, with such open and beautiful panoramic scenery of the Northern Plains. The state was also once home to no less than three Seattle to Chicago main lines and the longest operated stretch of electrified railroading in the country. Today, Montana still sees plenty of railroading action with two operating Class Is, one Regional and two shortlines.

Montana railroading has its beginnings dating back to 1880 when the narrow-gauge Utah & Northern first entered the extreme western part of the state (today the railroad is part of the Union Pacific system). Not long after this time the Northern Pacific and Great Northern would enter Montana pushing to the west where their main lines would eventually connect Minneapolis, Minnesota with Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and the entire Puget Sound region. The two would also stretch all of the way to Chicago via friendly connections with the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy.

While the Milwaukee Road was the last railroad to reach Montana, and eventually the Seattle/Puget Sound region as well, it would go on to become the most legendary. The Milwaukee decided that to stay competitive with the GN and NP it needed to likewise build a main line to the west coast, which it began at the beginning of the 20th century and completed by 1909 (by building this line so much later than its two competitors the Milwaukee had an overall lower maximum grade but it sacrificed online traffic for speed by skipping most large cities between Minneapolis and Seattle for the most direct route to the coast, which became both a blessing and a curse).

Over the next six years the railroad worked to electrify much of its Rocky Mountain and Coastal Divisions, which earned the railroad its legendary status. The Milwaukee, while initially planning to electrify its main line entirely from Harlowton, Montana to Seattle, Washington (and the rest of its Puget Sound operations), it never completed a gap between Avery, Idaho and Othello, Washington. In total, however, the Milwaukee would operate roughly 660 miles of electrified and railroad.

(It should also be noted that while the Burlington and Union Pacific also had a presence in Montana, it was nothing to the extent of the former three railroads mentioned.)

While the lack of online traffic along its main line in the Pacific Northwest hurt the Milwaukee this direct route was a force to be reckoned with when the piggyback revolution (i.e., truck trailers fixed directly to railroad flat cars) caught on in the 1950s and 1960s as the railroad was one of the first to embrace it and began service in the mid-1960s (with names like the XL Special and Thunderhawk). Because of its clear advantage of a direct route between Chicago and Seattle it soon dominated the market in the West.

With its web of branch lines in the Midwest and several other railroads fighting for the same amount of traffic that could no longer support so many railroads, the Milwaukee Road found itself in a hopeless situation on the eastern half of its system (and it was unable, along with the other railroads, to abandon most of these unprofitable lines because government regulations did not allow for such until the 1980 introduction of the Staggers Act which deregulated the entire industry).

All was not lost for the Milwaukee. Its savior, for the time being, was its Pacific Extension. Even as the company’s management began to make increasingly idiotic decisions during the 1970s (such as scrapping the electrification just as the oil embargo hit) and defer maintenance across the entire system, their main line to the Pacific Northwest continued to earn the company a healthy profit.

Sadly, though, the company’s fate was sealed when, in another short lapse of vision, management decided in the late 1970s to scrap the entire system west of Miles City, Montana, some 1,100 miles of track! While the results of this and other abandonment projects on the eastern side of the system worked in cutting costs the now much smaller railroad, which no longer competed for the lucrative traffic entering the Port of Seattle (which today is booming), made for a prime merger target and in 1985 the Soo Line Railroad purchased the company. With the purchase thus closed the book on one of our country’s most interesting and dynamic railroads.

It should also be noted that even as Milwaukee was piling up trains along its Pacific Extension with slow orders and derailments, as track conditions worsened, the railroad astonishingly still continued to receive a majority of the container and trailer traffic from the Port of Seattle. The Milwaukee also, ironically, brought about its own bankruptcy because of its deferred maintenance to the Pacific Extension. Even as the track got worse the railroad continued to move large amounts of freight over its Chicago-Seattle main line to such a degree that the lack of maintenance literally forced it into bankruptcy as the infrastructure could simply not handle the heavy volume.

Today, Montana railroading may no longer feature the Milwaukee Road’s Pacific Extension but Big Sky Country continues to see plenty of railroading action with Class Is BNSF and Union Pacific operating trackage within the state (much of it owned by BNSF). Others include Regional Montana Rail Link and shortlines Central Montana Rail, Inc. and Dakota, Missouri Valley & Western.

In total, these railroads operate a little over 3,000 miles of trackage although at one time the state was home to nearly twice that. For more information about Montana railroading, in terms of route mileage over the years please refer to the chart below.

And, while Montana railroading may also not feature trains like the North Coast Limited and Olympian Hiawatha the Empire Builder remains under the Amtrak banner, continuing to operate over much of the same territory as it always has with eleven different stops throughout Montana.

From both an emotional and economic standpoint, the loss of the Milwaukee’s main line in Montana was very hard on the cities and towns the railroad had operated through. However, several museums are now open in the state keeping alive the railroad’s history as well as others like the Great Northern and Northern Pacific. Some of these include the Charlie Russell Chew-Choo, Copper King Express, Historical Museum at Fort Missoula and the Montana Heritage Commission.

All in all, while Montana railroading may no longer feature electrified main line freight railroading or numerous famous passenger trains it does offer a unique blend of Class I and shortline operations as well as gorgeous scenery all around. So, a trip to the Treasure State, as its name implies, should be a memory-making experience!