Good Morning Montana
It's a glorious clear morning in Western Montana as SD70ACes 4408 and 4406 (both built new for the road in Apr. 2014) just in with Montana Rail Link's 'Day Gas' train from Missoula perform their runaround here at about MP 30.3 on the modern day MRL's 4th Subdivision mainline, the former Northern Pacific Railway mainline. They are just east of the Golf Street crossing on the eastern outskirts of the small town that serves as the county seat of Sanders County, and rising abruptly to the west across the valley of the Clark Fork is the Bitterroot Range. In short order they will couple to a string of empties and head east for home via a 110 mile run on the 4th and 10th Subs.
These gas trains are strictly an intra-MRL affair having come into being in 1995 when a gap was created in the 40 yr old and 531 mile long Yellowstone Pipeline when the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe chose not to renew the pipeline company's lease of 21 miles of right of way across their Flathead Indian Reservation. To learn about how and why this came about this article may be of interest: www.bigskywords.com/montana-blog/the-yellowstone-pipeline...
Thompson Falls, Montana
Monday September 5, 2022
Good Morning Montana
It's a glorious clear morning in Western Montana as SD70ACes 4408 and 4406 (both built new for the road in Apr. 2014) just in with Montana Rail Link's 'Day Gas' train from Missoula perform their runaround here at about MP 30.3 on the modern day MRL's 4th Subdivision mainline, the former Northern Pacific Railway mainline. They are just east of the Golf Street crossing on the eastern outskirts of the small town that serves as the county seat of Sanders County, and rising abruptly to the west across the valley of the Clark Fork is the Bitterroot Range. In short order they will couple to a string of empties and head east for home via a 110 mile run on the 4th and 10th Subs.
These gas trains are strictly an intra-MRL affair having come into being in 1995 when a gap was created in the 40 yr old and 531 mile long Yellowstone Pipeline when the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe chose not to renew the pipeline company's lease of 21 miles of right of way across their Flathead Indian Reservation. To learn about how and why this came about this article may be of interest: www.bigskywords.com/montana-blog/the-yellowstone-pipeline...
Thompson Falls, Montana
Monday September 5, 2022