The two of us awoke at the Old Montana Inn in Deer Lodge and following our morning preparations, had breakfast at the 4 B's Restaurant before visiting the two stations in town.
Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Deer Lodge station built in 1908. Deer Lodge was the division headquarters for the Milwaukee Road, officially known as the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, until their demise in 1980. Here, the Milwaukee Road was electrified until June 15, 1974, when the conversion to diesel-electric locomotives retired all the line's electric locomotives. At one time Deer Lodge was the site of large railroad yards, shops and a roundhouse. The roadbed and many of the bridges are still intact across Montana, with BNSF trains passing by daily during the week.
The 2,300 mile Pacific Extension, which extended the railroad lines in the Midwest to the Pacific Ocean was built in 1906-1909. One of the premiere passenger trains ever to run on this continent, the Olympian Hiawatha, stopped here until it was discontinued in May 1961, ostensibly for lack of passenger traffic. It turned out that ridership was still showing respectable numbers, but the train was unprofitable nonetheless. Replacement trains continued to make Deer Lodge a stop until 1964, when the western terminus of passenger service was pulled back to Aberdeen, South Dakota.
Today, it is home to the Community Evangelical Free Church.
Northern Pacific Deer Lodge station, year of construction unknown, after which we drove to the famous railroad display.
Milwaukee Road E9A 36A, ex. Indiana Railroad 100, nee Milwaukee Road 36A, built by Electro-Motive Division in 1961.
Milwaukee Road "Little Joe" EF-4 E70 built by General Electric in 1948. After World War II, the Soviet Railways continued its electrification program, this time targeting the Kropachyovo-Zlatoust-Chelyabinsk line of the South Urals Railway. As local factories were recovering from the war efforts, the Soviet government (then led by Joseph Stalin), ordered 20 of these locomotives. Known by their factory classification of GE 2-D+D-2 406/546 8-GE 750-3300V, in the Soviet Union, they would have received the classification of the A-series locomotive, with the A standing for Amerikanskiy elektrovoz, meaning "American electric locomotive". At the time this was the world's strongest electric locomotive, with a power output of 5,790 hp being comparable to the Union Pacific Big Boy.
The locomotives were built by General Electric at Erie, Pennsylvania, with the supervision of Soviet specialists. The Ministry of Railways of the USSR was so confident about receiving these locomotives, that they were also allocated running numbers, initially 1591-1610 and later 2301-2320. The first test run of the locomotive (unit A1598) took place on 7 September 1948 on a test track of the New York Central Railroad. GE built 20 locomotives of this type, but the company was prohibited from delivering them as relations between the United States and Soviet Union deteriorated into the Cold War. Fourteen were built to the Soviet gauge of 5 feet and the final six were built to standard gauge.
The locomotives were never delivered because the State Department banned sales of strategic goods to the Soviet Union whilst production was underway. This included the electric locomotives, which were considered strategic to the Soviet Railways. Before the ban, the tensions between the US and USSR caused the Soviet railway engineers to be recalled back to their country. GE completed the locomotives, but they were left with no owner. Two were damaged during the trials.
The Milwaukee Road had offered to buy all 20 locomotives, plus their spare parts, for $1 million. That was little more than scrap value, but GE accepted. However, the Milwaukee's Board of Directors would not release the money. Nonetheless, unit 29927 was tested on 24 December 1948 on the Milwaukee Road, but it revealed some issues during trials. Demand during the Korean War boosted the Milwaukee's need for locomotives on their electrified mainline. The railroad was also beset by a coal strike that required sending most diesels back East (Milwaukee Lines East steam engines still burned coal, unlike the oil-burning Lines West steamers). So the Board of Directors returned to GE, only to discover that eight locomotives and all the spare parts had been sold. Three had gone to the Chicago South Shore & South Bend Railroad and five to the Companhia Paulista de Estradas de Ferro of Brazil.
Still, the Milwaukee Road bought the remaining 12 locomotives for $1 million and railroad designated them as "class EF-4", denoting them as the line's fourth model of electric freight engine. Two units were modified before delivery for passenger service; these were designated "class EP-4". The Milwaukee's operating employees referred to the EF-4/EP-4 units as Little Joseph Stalin's locomotives, which was eventually shortened to simply Little Joe.
The two great locomotives here.
Milwaukee Road caboose 992185, nee Milwaukee Road 02185 built by Thrall in 1956.
The three railroad stars of Deer Lodge.
The donation plaque of Milwaukee Road 36A.
General Electric builder's plate of the Little Joe.
Electrified Rail Road - The Milwaukee Road story board.
"Little Joe" - The Milwaukee Road story board.
First of the Northern Transcontinental Railroads Driving The Last Spike story board.
First of the Northern Transcontinental Railroads The Northern Pacific Railroad story board.
First of the Northern Transcontinental Railroads Construction of the Northern Pacific story board.
The Northern Pacific Railroad's Last Spike May 19,1909.
I next drove us to Anaconda.
A passenger car of unknown origin.
Butte Anaconda and Pacific roundhouse built in 1893.
The sandhouse built in 1900.
Montana Union Railroad Anaconda station built in 1890, home to Anaconda Building Center. The depot is a brick structure with a hipped roof of wood shingles. On its north side is a polygonal projecting bay with a conical roof. The building sits on an elevated stone foundation (rusticated ashlar granite) and has several large semi-circular arched openings with stone voussoirs which match the foundation. To the east of the depot are two wood frame warehouses currently used for lumber storage.
While working in Butte between approximately 1891 and 1896, architect Robert Nickel designed a few substantial buildings in Anaconda. He specialized in railroad depot construction, designing buildings for both the Montana Union and the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railway. His services, however, were never formally advertised in either the Anaconda City Directories or the local newspapers. He left Montana in approximately 1898.
The Butte, Anaconda, and Pacific Railway Historic District is a district comprised of the right-of-way of the railroad as it runs across the Butte hill, between Butte and Anaconda, and through the city of Anaconda. In addition, the district contains grounds on which sit various buildings owned by or historically associated with the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific. These grounds include the Butte depot, the West Butte yards, the Rocker yards, the Gregson sectionhouse, the East Anaconda yards, the Anaconda depot, the railroad's General Office, and the main Anaconda yards and shops complex. Numerous historic bridges are also located along the right-of-way.
We continued on to Butte.
Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Butte station built in 1957 and closed in 1961 when the last Olympian Hiawatha went through. This station served passengers for only a short time.
Using the Railroad Station Historical Society database, we drove to the other Milwaukee Road station and freight house in town.
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Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Butte station built in 1916. From the 1880's to the 1950's, trains assured Butte’s survival by transporting everything from passengers and mail to ore. This marvelous depot, with its 95- foot clock tower, was constructed to serve passenger trains of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway and consisted of a head house for passenger services and a baggage/express building connected by a glass vestibule. St. Louis pressed brick, marble floors, and oak-and-burlap paneling added interior elegance to the 160 tons of structural steel used in the construction of the complex. Electrically powered engines brought no dirt, dust, or smoke into the station, earning it a reputation as a "model of cleanliness". The depot ceased its original function when train travel diminished in the 1950's. Home of KXLF television since 1957, the depot was one of Butte's first major restoration projects in the 1970's. It is today an excellent example of preservation and adaptive reuse.
Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Butte freight station built in 1916, which houses the Herbaceous Company, a cannabis store.
Great Northern Butte station built in 1916 at the corner of Arizona and Third Streets, a single-story Sullivanesque building with a grand round-arched entrance. Adjacent to the Great Northern Depot, a warehouse zone stretched south along Arizona, connecting with the railroad/foundry/warehouse zone centered on Front Street. Just to the north, original garages for the city's early trolley cars were built at 1300 East Front Street, at the junction of the streetcar lines east of the Union Depot. Butte Electric Railway expanded the complex with the addition of maintenance shops and car barns between First, Front and Atlantic Streets, which became the transport company's base of operations.
Butte Electric Railway streetcar 63, City of Butte from 2001, ex. Caras Park Missoula 63, nee Butte Electric Railway 63, built by the railroad in 1912. We then searched for the Northern Pacific station.
Northern Pacific Butte station built in 1906. The first railroad to reach Montana was the Union Pacific, which in 1881 established a terminal one mile south of Uptown. After the Northern Pacific reached Butte in 1890, it shared the Union Pacific's wooden passenger depot. As Butte grew from town to metropolis, its businessmen lobbied for construction of a grand, union station. The Great Northern (which arrived in Butte in the late 1880's) refused, so in 1906, the Northern Pacific replaced the 1881 depot with these three hipped-roof buildings. The center structure originally boasted a covered overhang shading the platform. It housed a three-hundred-person general waiting room; men's smoking and ladies' private rooms; and ticket and telegraph offices. A stairway led upstairs to a gallery, designed as a public "promenade and lounging place", as well as to the railroad's administrative offices. The western building housed the baggage and freight offices; the eastern building housed the express offices and a restaurant. By 1916, twelve Northern Pacific and four Union Pacific passenger trains stopped daily, in addition to "specials", like their summer Sunday fishing train. The last passenger train left the station in 1979.
Northern Pacific Butte freight house built in 1906.
BNSF power in their yard. We then went to the World Museum of Mining for their railroad displays.
Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Durant station, originally located alongside the railroad's line in the canyon between Butte and Fairmont, in the vicinity of German Gulch. The operator's building was donated to the World Museum of Mining in 1976. The Northern Pacific Railway laid track in this area in 1883 and was also frequented by the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway, as well as the Milwaukee Railroad.
Butte, Anaconda & Pacific maintenance-of-way vehicle built for work on the railroad's overhead electric catenary cables. Founded in 1892, the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway is a short line railroad operating in Montana. It was financed by the interests behind the Anaconda Copper Mining Company and operated primarily carrying copper ore from the mines at Butte to smelters at Anaconda. The company was chartered as a common carrier but also carried passengers and general freight.
Anaconda Copper 3' gauge 0-4-0T 12 built by Davenport Locomotive Works in 1916. The Anaconda mine was closed in 1947 after producing 94,900 tons of copper. Its location has been consumed by the Berkeley Pit, a vast open-pit mine that uses a different technology to adapt to changing grades of copper ore.
Great Western 0-6-0T 3 1956, nee Keystone Steel & Wire Company 3, built by H.K. Porter in 1928. Great Western Sugar's origins date from 1903 when Charles Boettcher founded the Great Western Sugar Company and opened a sugar beet plant in Loveland, Colorado.
Gardner-Denver GD-9 Mucker.
Gardner-Denver GD-9 Mucker information boards.
We went back inside and the man behind the counter gave us excellent directions to the Anselmo Mine, which is the most intact of any in Butte. It includes the main hoist engine room, an auxiliary hoist building (with a lamp room in the lower level), carpenter shop, timekeeper's offices, hose house, the dry (miners' locker room), and a warehouse, in addition to the headframe with its tipple and two idler towers. The compressed air tank also survives. Inside, tools and other artifacts are found in place, just as they were when the mine was operating.
The Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railway train at the Anselmo is the only remaining artifact of the first electrified heavy haul engine that served as the prototype for electrifying rail engines throughout the country. Ore was raised from the mine to the tipple structure on the side of the headframe, from where it was dumped into train cars below. The trains, which once laced together all the mines, transported copper ore to the town of Anaconda, where it was concentrated and smelted at the huge Washoe Smelter.
The Anselmo also had a yard that treated lumber for underground timbers and supplied them to many mines. The timber was milled west of Butte, at Rocker, and brought to the Anselmo where it was treated with arsenic to prevent rotting. The present Anselmo headframe came from the Black Rock Mine, and was moved to the Anselmo in 1936. The Anselmo was an important lead and zinc mine, and also produced silver and copper. A lengthy strike that shut down most of Butte's mines in 1959 spelled the end of the Anselmo, which did not reopen after that strike.
The BA&P walking trail, built on the former bed of the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway, passes near the Anselmo yard. Not far to the west, the trail passes the Desperation Fan Tower, an octagonal concrete structure where bad air exited from the Anselmo mine.
Butte Anaconda & Pacific boxcab 47, ex. Montana Museum of Mining 47, World Museum of Mining 47, nee Butte Anaconda & Pacific 47, built by General Electric in 1914.
Butte Anaconda & Pacific two bay hopper 3777.
Butte Anaconda and Pacific box car, history unknown.
Butte Anaconda & Pacific caboose 8.
On the left is NSWX combine M-10, nee Butte Anaconda and Pacific motorcar M-10. In 1980, it was in a junkyard in Bozeman before it was salvaged to become part of the World Museum of Mining's short-lived Neversweat & Washoe Railroad tourist line. On the right is NSWX 20DE20 25 built by Whitcomb in 1951 for the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. It was later acquired by the World Museum of Mining and repainted for Neversweat & Washoe Railroad.
I drove us Three Forks and found a caboose in John Q. Adams Milwaukee Railroad Park. Named for the founder of the City of Three Forks, this park houses the old Trident Depot building. The Three Forks Historical Society saved the depot when Montana Rail Link dissolved the old Trident station. It was an original icon in the former town of Trident (which is now all gone).
Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific caboose 01847, nee Milwaukee Road 991847, built by the railroad in 1939.
Ideal Cement Company 0-4-OT, nee Three Forks Portland Cement Company at Trident, built by Vulcan Iron Works in 1910. In 2020, it was transported from Nevada City to the Train Depot Museum in Three Forks, a project that was eight years in the making. The steam engine had connections to the area after it was used in the construction of the Panama Canal.
Milwaukee Road Trident station built in 1911. We were invited inside.
Northern Pacific 2-4-0 model.
Northern Pacific 4-8-2 model.
Eastbound descending Pipestone Pass 1973 painting.
Milwaukee Road memorabilia donated by Joseph Peccia, whose family had two hundred and fifty years of service on the Milwaukee Road on the Rocky Mountain Division in Montana.
One of the many display cases; this one also houses Milwaukee Road items.
Display cases full of Milwaukee Road and Northern Pacific memorabilia and ephemera.
Milwaukee Road signs and a picture of Little Joes.
A Burlington Northern freight train on display.
A G gauge model of Burlington Northern SD70MAC 9785.
Santa Fe 2-6-2 52 with a freight train.
The depot when it was active in Trident.
A speeder in front of the Trident station.
Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Sacajawea Hotel built in 1910.
The former Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Three Forks Hospital built by the railroad in 1915, now apartments. We continued our eastward journey with Elizabeth driving.
An accident caused a detour off Interstate 90 which cost us a few minutes.
BNSF 6663 West with Ferromex 4024 as we neared Billings. We drove to Perkins in Billings for an excellent meal and then stayed at Howard Johnson for the night.
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