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Montana Rail Link photo roster
great photos
Very nice collection of roster pictures. Will look forward to other collections of medium size and/or shortline railroads.
I enjoyed the photo series. I worked for EMD-GMC from 1966 thru 1985 in field service as a District Engineer assigned to the SP out of Los Angeles. After viewing the MRL roster, I realized I had been on many of their former SP units. It was a nice trip down memory lane. Thanks.
AWESOME! Can’t get enough of the Great Pacific Northwest, thanks for a grand tour of MRL.
Tidy ‘little’ railroad.
The Livingston Yard always has motive power nearby, usually with several roads represented. Then you go through the yards at Laurel for an occasional surprise. MRL has other yards, such as Missoula and Helena, where foreign power is a regular occurance.
You guys sure can tug my heart strings. I studied a lot of MRL west of Missoula, especially the gas line which replaced a section of a major trans-con pipeline that the Ntive Americans ruled could no longer cross the reservations between Missoula and Thompson Falls. The majority of this ran thru Sanders County, and I was a member of the Sheriff’s Search & Rescue Unit, so most likely saw all of the MRL trackage from The Idaho State Line back to near Missoula. Sure the country’s most beautiful background for a railroad. It even had semaphores at one point early in my time there. The only way you could have made me more homesick would have been to photograph SP 4449 wen she passed that way a few months after I moved to Florida. I had chased her all around California before moving to Montana!. A great collection of Western Montana scenery.
You guys sure can tug my heart strings. I studied a lot of MRL west of Missoula, especially the gas line which replaced a section of a major trans-con pipeline that the Ntive Americans ruled could no longer cross the reservations between Missoula and Thompson Falls. The majority of this ran thru Sanders County, and I was a member of the Sheriff’s Search & Rescue Unit, so most likely saw all of the MRL trackage from The Idaho State Line back to near Missoula. Sure the country’s most beautiful background for a railroad. It even had semaphores at one point early in my time there. The only way you could have made me more homesick would have been to photograph SP 4449 wen she passed that way a few months after I moved to Florida. I had chased her all around California before moving to Montana!. A great collection of Western Montana scenery.
Great pictures! I really enjoyed the captions and the colourful photos
Great Article. Takes me back to 1969 and 1970 before BN when I visited the area in the Northern Pacific and Milwaukee Road days. This is certainly one of the most beautiful areas in the US.
Great pictures, but what is a remote controlled caboose?
That is the kind of articles I like to read. These were very good pictures in my favorite part of the country.
Wonderful photos of my favorite RR and fav area of the country. John Millard? What in the world would cause you to move from beautiful Montana to hot, icky Florida?
Thanks everyone for the nice comments!
Chet, A remote control caboose is an old caboose that is outfitted with the necessary equipment that you might normally have on board a RC-equipped locomotive. MRL does it this way so that they can use any locomotive with the remote caboose, and not have to equip all of their switching locomotives with the equipment. This improves locomotive utilization. In fact, the picture of GP9 No. 117 and the remote control caboose shows them switching the ConocoPhillips/ExxonMobil facility in Missoula. They do not use remote control in this facility, but the locomotive and remote caboose are kept together for other non-remote switching operations in the area such as this.
FIRST VISIT… IMPRESSIVE!!