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Day 25: Essex, MT to Kalispell, MT

Good morning Montana! Morning started a bit early when at 5am I woke up shivering… heater had stopped working in the night and things had gotten rather chilly inside. Despite my best attempts the heater was still dead, out of gas or something. So found a spare quilt and put on the puny electric heater, which did the trick.

Compare this to last night and see the difference that having a heater on can make! I could hear the snow sliding off all night.

No fresh snow over night, though my track had filled in a wee bit. Went and had pancakes for breakfast and had to pay in cash as the satellite dish was now hanging on by a single bolt or something and aiming at the opposite hill, so no internet at all. Not even the slightest hope of web.

There was a train grinding its way through the many snow sheds above the Snow Slip Inn when went to hop in the car, so I headed off towards West Glacier to try and catch it. Well "try" isn...

Day 24: Missoula, MT to Essex, MT

Woke up to another lovely gray day here in Missoula. Fantastic… and all the snow was melting too, so a pretty bad combination for any kind of photography. Tried to hit the road fairly promptly to see if the Day Gas Local was around. Went down to the yards and saw endless white tank wagons in the yard and at the Exxon facility being emptied, so concluded that the local had already been and gone. Oh well. The remote shunter was doing a bit of work though, moving around some of those gas tanks…

… you can see how depressing the weather was!

I sat and waited for a bit while a massive earthworm slowly moved around the yard and then followed it when it took off. Caught it and barely missed it a few times, and then had to do some frustrating doubling back when it had to stop for a work train.

At Frenchtown I caught the two passing:

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Day 23: Missoula MT railfanning

Woke up to a thin layer of snow all over Missoula, about a couple of inches. Brushed off the car and went off to see what there was to see in Missoula. Unfortunately the temperature had already climbed above freezing so Missoula was very soggy and the snow was rapidly melting.

Had a cruise around and found, surprise surprise…

… although this one was a bit different as in addition to the usual pigeon wildlife, people live here! It appears to have been turned into a gallery / studio / apartments type affair, and looks pretty interesting.

I drove on a bit and found the railway yards, but there was a whole lot of nothing happening. I spied some amazing birds nests in the lighting tower though, and about a million birds lined up on a power line; I guess they know where the best train watching spots are.

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Day 22: Helena, MT to Missoula, MT

My railfan tour along the MRL continues. Another night in a Motel 6, and another vague "never again" promise. Down at the Helena yard it was pretty quiet, although I noticed a 6-pack of classic EMD power sitting waiting. The MRL staff here are very used to suspicious looking cars sitting at the crossing for hours at a time, in fact most times I visited there was someone or other sitting in their car watching the happenings. I think I was a bit unusual in that I, you know, got out of my car.

By my count there were three SD45s and three SD40s. Not a bad lash up at all! They sat around for a bit and then after half an hour coupled onto their train and they were off. I'm trying to work out how I can smuggle one of these SD45s out of the country.

I tried to chase them up the hill but with so many horses on the front it was an impossible task and he easi...

Day 21: Helena, MT railfanning

When one wakes up in a Motel 6, you feel like you're waking up in some poorly scripted crime-thriller plot line. Romantic is one thing it most certainly isn't! So I escaped fairly quickly and was on my way down to the railway yard again. I soon struck the jackpot with a

Yes, those are airplane fuselages being railed across the MRL! 737s I believe, there were 3 shells and each was a different length. The get railed from one factory to another for (I guess) final assembly. Behind each shell there is an enclosed compartment for additional components, and then a few specialty enclosed wagons behind them with more components.

Support wagons; notice how they dwarf the diggers next to them!

I raced on up the hill to try and follow this guy over the pass, but obviously lost him somewhere because after much delay the train that actually got the helpers and...

Day 20: Livingston MT to Helena MT

Decided to drive to Helena today, over Bozeman Pass of course. Started off and soon caught a train; downhill, but I'm not going to say no to a photo-op, and especially not a pair of warbonnets in the snow!

Continued on up the hill and set up a stakeout at the "Cowboy Cookout". 40 minutes later and I got my wish; a nice big BNSF earthworm.

And then a few minutes along came the midtrain helpers; a 5-pack of SD40s, always a pleasant sight.

I was just about to leave but just ten minutes later another earthworm came crawling up the hill, again with a 5-pack of SD40 mid train helpers. Wow, just 10 minutes apart! Try that in NZ.

 

A trusty and surprisingly clean dash-9 brought up the rear.

I raced up the hill and int...

Day 19: Billings, MT to Livingston, MT

Went down and had a look at the Billings yard, and in the process spied my first Montana Rail Link (MRL) locos. Yay! They have a very striking blue/black/white paint scheme that is simple, but distinctive and bold. And also very hard to photograph I'm discovering!

Seems to be grain train season at the moment, as every day I'm seeing the BNSF earthworms. They're not quite as impressive here as in Arizona, where they run them as 3x2x1 consists, that is 3 locos on front, 2 in the middle, and one on the rear… and they run at 60mph. But that said, the sight of a near uniform train of easily 100+ wagons is quite a sight!

All the yards over here have lots of aerials sticking up. I'm not quite sure the reason for this; presumably each point is monitored and signalled, but why not run underground cables instead?

While waiting for something to happen I went to Walmart and spied an amazing factory. No idea wh...

Day 18: Jamestown ND to Billings, MT

Lot of distance to cover today, but I was keen to get out of North Dakota and into what I hoped would be the most amazing state yet, Montana. However thanks to a tip off from a friend I first went looking for the World's Largest Buffalo Statue. I found it alright, right next to the National Buffalo Museum. Yup. A buffalo museum. They also have a fully functional live bison herd, however they were all hiding when I went and all I saw was a cat.

Yup, ok. It's big a concrete and a dubious claim to fame. I drove down to the other end of town to checkout the railway yards and found, surprisingly enough, a grain elevator!

While staring at it a truck arrived and unloaded, and then a train went past, complete with Warbonnet loco on the front (still with Santa Fe markings too). Further down the road at the "yards" (glorified siding) I spotted three geeps, two still in Burlington Northern green &a...

Day 16: Hartland, MN to Jamestown, ND

Woke up at some ungodly hour of the morning. Anna's classes had been cancelled the previous day so we didn't have to rush back that night, however in Minnesota it would take a blizzard of biblical proportions to shut them down for any more than a day. So we had to return the girl in time for her 10am class, which meant on the road by 7:30 at the latest.

First thing I did though was check for the latest news on the Christchurch earthquake, and by now pictures were starting to emerge and boy was it bad. Anna had come to the same conclusion; we knew it was bad the previous night, but had we had no idea just how bad it really was. A few more "I'm ok" messages had come in overnight so I was feeling a bit better about that at least.

We were soon on the road and heading out to the windfarm that had popped up down the road. Apparently when Anna returned from NZ she found that 250 wind turbines had sprouted up down the road!

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Day 15: Stuck in a Minnesota blizzard

Mrs Payne had warned me that I might hear a bit of a stampede in the morning, and sure enough at some ungodly hour of the morning I heard many small feet sprinting down the stairs. I woke up a very leisurely hour and looked out the window to see a completely white world; was pretty amazing! Went down stairs and found Anna in her PJs lounging on a radiator, keeping an eye on the fridge. Emma was nowhere to be seen, but apparently that's normal teenager behaviour :-)

Had some breakfast and Lori, Anna's mum, started baking like mad. She asked with a little glint in her eye if I'd ever tried rhubarb pie, thinking that she was about to unleash a whole new world of culinary delights on me; unfortunately for her I'm already a rhubarb addict!

Anna tried unsuccessfully for a while to "passively" wake her sister, but her sister wasn't too keen on playing outside with us (despite Anna's "worst sister ever " comments!). So just the two of us rugged up in all sorts of super dupe...