The Ghost Yard in Montana

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

While focusing on the Empire Builder route in Montana by way of Google Maps, after moving east from Malta, MT, I then traveled into the Bowdoin Bird Sanctuary. Just east of Lake Bowdoin I saw a ghost yard north of the tracks with a large classification yard, extent buildings, and most apparent of all, a 24-pit roundhouse scar that made whatever this was something quite major in the early years of the Manitoba, etc years of building their transcontinental railroad.

From an 1893 map of the Great Northern lines, between Malta and Saco are two stations listed: Bowdoin and Ashfield. One of these, I would think, was the name of this yard. Google has no information, nor does Wikipedia, so I am coming to you guys to see if you know anything about it.

Thanking you all in advance.

2

Instead of receiving big bucks for my advice, I’ll give some free advice to Big Bux: (sorry!)

A few weeks back, there was a thread on this Forum that was attempting to locate all of the turntable pits in the country: cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/p/195380

If your roundhouse scar isn’t on that list, we can’t help you…but maybe you’ve just helped us!

(Your first name isn’t Dietrich, is it?)

3

1893 may be too early.

The turntable pit is at these Lat./ Long. coords. (per ACME Mapper 2.0): N 48.39673 W 107.59821

There’s also traces of a wye to the southwest of the turntable area.

This website was interesting, but not much help: http://www.railroads-of-montana.com/

This says the Bowdoin NWR was named after a nearby long-abandoned railroad siding town: http://www.montanabirdingtrail.org/maps/r2/t1/s2/r2t1s2.php#cultural

Search this large (approx. 3.1 MB) PDF file for “Bowdoin”: http://www.mnhs.org/library/findaids/00329.pdf

and you’ll find several references - the first being this one:

“5126 Wolf Point and Bowdoin (MT): terminals, 1912-1917.”

Then: “8608 Bowdoin (MT): terminals, 1917-1923.”

Here are excerpts from this webpage, sorted by location for “Bowdoin” (items 7801 - 8000 of 99,492 !):

http://www.gn-npjointarchive.org/Lists/AFE_List/AllItems.aspx?Paged=TRUE&p_Location=BOW&p_AFEYear=1909&p_ID=8466&View=%7b76BBFE73%2d9A0D%2d4D88%2dB

4

Interesting that so much is still visible after all these years.

5

Link to Bing Map’s “Bird’s-Eye View” of that location:

http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=s1zdwd6104bz&lvl=17&dir=0&sty=b&where1=48.39673%2C%20-107.59821&form=LMLTCC

Just as interesting is that there’s so little information readily available on-line about it, even giving due consideration to the fact that considerably less than ‘everything’ is on the Internet. I didn’t bother to list all of the other Montana and GN-oriented websites I visited that didn’t have anything much on it either.

  • Paul North.
6

I’ve taken the liberty of posting this location and thread to the above-referenced turntable thread here, which is captioned as “Roundhouses and Turntables (and transfer tables)” and is curerently at:

http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/195380/2156254.aspx#2156254

  • Paul North.
7

Thank you all for answering my question. Now I know. It sure didn’t last for very long.

8

And it looks like a WB seed train is in the G-E picture.

9

What’s a seed train?

10

What’s a seed train?

11

What is the G-E picture?

12

Grain.

Google Earth.