Memories of Avery, Idaho

My buddy from California came up north to visit me and we went to Avery, Idaho on May 15th to see the last of electric operations.  We climbed the hill to the north of the engine facilities to shoot from a high hill position.

On Bill Barker's layout he modeled the Avery facilities  to near perfection!

Looking east from the road overpass is the station, town and sub station. All electrics cut off at the train station and went to the engine house for service. The 2 Little Joes are moving into position near the station to take over an eastbound that  will have diesels on the point and will cut off and get out of the way.

Compare the photos and you can figure out where you are if you were looking at the Milwaukee  Road layout near Hamilton, Montana. Nice job Bill !

Memembering the Milwaukee Road station in Missoula

38 years ago I chased the last of the Milwaukee electrics into Missoula and focused on the train rather than the background. I was with my 9 year old son Jerry Jr and he shot the similar shot from the stairs that led down to the tracks. Yes he had a 35 mm camera as well. The date is June 8, 1974.

This past weekend I traveled back to Missoula with my daughter Bonnie and son-in-law Kent to see the University of Montana play their state rivals.  Before the game started we were walking around downtown and I thought wouldn't it be neat ( do people still say that? ) if I took photos of the old station at or near the same spot I did back in 1974? Well here it is completely restored and still in use but not as a railroad station. The tracks were gone

back in May of 1980 and the railroad was gone except parts of it were absorbed by Midwest railroads.

The backside looks pretty good as well except those darn kids keep getting in my photos! Can you tell which one is my daughter Bonnie? Can you tell which one played linebacker for the U of M and the Jets?

Missoula still has an active train station but not for travelers, Amtrak does not come this way west as they gave up the NP line in favor of the Great Northern line further north. If Mike Applegate is correct I may have had something to do with saving this station when we tried to save the Spokane GN and UP stations

and failed. Mike thinks the noise we made in Spokane had an effect on the BN president at the time and they saved Missoula, Helena, Tacoma, Livingston and others when they realized people still thought they were worth saving. Its a nice thought but I would need to see BN documents to prove it to me.

Missoula has the foresight to save one of NP's 4-6-0's and it looks like it could still pull a few cars around at 60 mph down the line.

Remembering the Milwaukee Road

After waiting 3 hours on a hillside in Rosalia, Washington here comes an westbound over a very unique concrete bridge that still stands today but without rails or even a railroad. I remember it was cold and windy!

A  favorite photo of mine was shot by our pal Chuck Heimerdinger who came up here to Dawson, Montana from sunny California back in the 1960s. The formatting on this photo is terrific showing the 2 kinds of electric locomotives they were running back in the good old days. Is today going to be considered by some as the good old days in 20 years?

I don't remember who shot this photo but it wasn't me because I am in the shot with my pretty white pants in a railroad yard! The place was Deer Lodge, Montana a busy spot for the railroad back in the day.

Back in the day when I could climb hills without catching my breath,  my good friend Leon Callaway from California came up here to see the final days of Milwaukee Road electric operations. The date is May 15th, 1974 and the power will be shut off in exactly 1 month to go. 

One of my all time favorites was me catching these old Boxcab eclectics in helper service at East Portal, Montana, which is on the Montana/Idaho border and about ready to enter a long tunnel. First off I was lucky to have my 300mm lens on as I didn't know they were coming until I saw them. Second, if they didn't have empty flat cars in the front of the engines, then no shot would be possible. Third, there was still sufficient light to stop the action with not much time to decide focal length, speed of the camera and formatting the shot. Lucky seems to come to my mind at being in the right place at the right time. Remember these are 50 year old machines when I took these photos, not many locomotives are around that long! I was in a time warp!