May I suggest shortening the title by making the following changes? By the way, not all of what you wanted to write appeared. There is probably a limit to title length.
Title: “Intermodal Cars Stored in MT”
Body: “I recently traveled from Alberta to California on I-15. Between Great Falls and, I believe it is, Butte, Montana, I noticed about 10 to 15 miles of old intermodal units. They just seem to be stored on an abandoned line. Does any one know anything about th. . .”
The BNSF Montana division map lists the line between Great Falls and Helena as “out of service”. Likely the stored cars are along that line. I do not believe there remains any part of the former GN line from Helena to Butte.
For the last 2 years, the BNSF has been showing indications that the economy was headed south. The cars idled on the Great Falls-Helena line were the first indication. Idled cars then started showing up on the BNSF operated former Milwaukee RR Lewistown line that connects with the BNSF Laurel subdivison line at Sipple. There is a lengthy string of idled high cube box cars on that line now along with the intermodal cars.
There was quite a string of intermodals idled on the Havre-Big Sandy line. I do not know if they are still there.
This last spring on a trip to Fargo, there were roughly 8 miles of various intermodal cars parked on the embargoed Glendive-Circle Mt line. This is a former NPRR spur.
In the last month, intermodal cars, (mostly tofc cars) were parked on passing sidings on the Laurel Sub at Armington and Stanford Mt.
What has been surprising is that some of the cars parked in the area look brand new or darn close to it. With all the miles of cars I have seen sitting on BNSF property in Montana, it is indictative of the large number of intermodal trains no longer travelling the BNSF system.
The end result: the daily freights traveling the the BNSF from Sweetgrass Mt to Laurel Mt have gone from 3 and 4 SD40-2’s to two of the late model big GE’s pulling those freights. I suspect that there is a BNSF line someplace stacked with SD40-2’s no longer needed.
It is the economy, economy, and the economy. Just keep an eye on the railroad in Montana and when the cars start to disappear get back into the stock market.