And the Milwaukee Road?

In a recent blog entry a friend of mine asked "what is the fascination with the Milwaukee Road?" He further relates that there are many people for whom the MILW is not their primary interest, but that there is a large group of people who are interested in the road and its unfortunate demise. In my modeling and research interests, I've come across a lot of people who spent a great deal of time photographing and "experiencing" the MILW before its demise. In addition, I know several railroaders, former employees of the last transcon, who continued to work on the road through derailments, deferred maintenance and an uncertain future. They're proud they stuck it out to the end, though as one now quite veteran conductor commented, what else was there to do? I understand that, they're not the heroes some fans have made them, they just did their job until it wasn't there. However, I never really "got" the MILW fan base and its infatuation, perhaps I still don't.

Of all the locations on the MILW, Avery seems to be Lines West Mecca. I once asked a noted railroad author, former railroader (though not MILW) and prolific photographer if he ever regretted spending so much time on the MILW; perhaps, in retrospect, he would have liked to spread his time over some other very interesting lines, now gone as well? "No." No thinking about it, no considering other lines. Just no. I prodded him further, sort of disenchanted with the sudden firmness of his answer. Almost as assuredly, he related that he would GIVE UP his time on other lines for MORE time on the MILW if he could go back and do it again. Such is the nature of the "Avery Curse." Such is the nature of the MILW fan. I can't quite understand.

Over the last several years I've intermittenly explored much of the MILW west of Harlowtown and east of the Cascade Mountains. I'm intimately familiar with the MILW remnant now operated as the St. Maries River RR, which perhaps employs the last regular all-MILW crew, anywhere. I've explored and photographed the other notable western shortline remnant of the MILW, the Central Montana Rairoad. After hiking long distances into the St Maries or Arrow Canyons on on these railroads, one appreciates the desire of the MILW to reach out for Montana traffic others passed by. Sitting alone, high in a barren draw in central Montana one really appreciates the fact that there are still rails along part of the route. I imagined that the geeps pulling loads of logs or grain were the orange and black of the MILW, and I have made mental notes about the differences in the MILW system standards still evident in the trackwork, different from the UP and NP branches I'm most familiar with. And yes, I've been to Avery, talked with several who photographed Avery, and attentively watched their slide shows. I know people who worked and lived and at Avery. Yet, I still don't understand why one would give up other experiences for MORE on the MILW. Personally, I'd like to see more of the OTHER stuff, the now abandoned lines passed by and ignored and now not even missed, in the hurry to get back to Avery.

Although I would still like to see photographs from those "other" overlooked lines, I think I have come to a respectful understanding of the MILW. As the last transcon built, it was engineered at a level superior to some that preceeded it; it was built to last and as the many remaining viaducts attest, it is lasting even in abandonment. I'm not only talking about Yuppie tourist destinations like St. Paul Pass, now the Hiawatha Trail, cool as those places are, but the forgotten remnants where few have tread since the scrap train. Belt Creek, southeast of Great Falls, lonely, empty elevators at Marcellus, Highwood, Shonkin and many others. One cannot help but admire the railroad the built to those quiet places, where the occasional depot still stands as reminder of the railroad's passing. Were these locations so much less than Avery?

It hasn't been Avery, Harlowtown and other well-known places that slowly drew me into the fold, that makes me add "and the Milwaukee Road." Rather it has been the experience of pulling up to a stop at a former grade crossing after driving dozens of miles on a rough gravel road through range land interspersed with wheat fields, and commenting to a friend, "wow, what a shot," or "they came through that!?" That has warmed me to the MILW. These places where cows outnumber people, where a modern railroad existed in a land closer to a frontier than a county in a state of the most powerful nation in the world. It is that fascinating mix of old and new, a combination of modern and traditional railroading in demise: it was SD40-2s running with ancient boxcabs helpers. I found the MILW through the remoteness of the territory traversed: the site of a remote elevator at the end of 50 miles of unpaved road, that never loaded anything but 40-foot boxcars.


Shonkin -- Perhaps the Milwaukee should never have built to some of these almost impossibly remote stations, but it did. And there, on a summer evening with a breeze whispering through the grass on a stormy day, I cannot help but feel the tug, the fascination of the Milwaukee Road, even though THESE places went unphotographed as well. Such was the nature of the Avery Curse.