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Montana Rail Link Locomotives and Rolling Stock 2000 by Robert C Del Grosso & Ri
Montana Rail Link Locomotives and Rolling Stock 2000 by Robert C Del Grosso & Richard Yaremko
Soft Cover
128 pages
Copyright 2000
CONTENTS
Montana Rail Link, Montana's Heritage Railroad Page 1
Montana Rail Link's Locomotive Fleet Page 7
RosterModelPage
11SW128
12-18SW120010
51-52SW150014
100-135GP916
151GP19-124
200-225SD4026
250SD40-230
251SD40-2XR 32
290SDP40 34
301-331SD45-236
343-389SD4540
390-393F4545
400-406GP3549
600-610SD952
651-652SD19-156
700-705SD3560
MRL's Revenue Freight Car Fleet Page 64
MRL's Caboose Fleet Page 90
MRL's 250-ton "Big Hook" Page 96
Montana Rail Link System Map Page 97
MRL Color Gallery Page 98
I&M Rail Link System Map Page 112
Business Car Fleet Page 113
Operation Lifesaver Units Page 116
MRL Heritage Locomotives Page 119
The I&M Rail Link, A Brief History and Motive Power Roster Page 121
INTRODUCTION
It began when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Northern Pacific Railroad Charter on July 2, 1864 to construct a railroad line from Lake Superior to Puget Sound. Westward construction began at Thompson's Jct. (Staples), Minnesota in the spring of 1871. The mainline progressed as far west as
Bismarck, North Dakota, arriving there on June 3, 1873 where work was suspended due to a financial collapse of the company. Construction was resumed in the summer of 1879 and continued uninterrupted until meeting construction forces building from the west.
Eastward construction of the Northern Pacific from Ainsworth, Washington began on October 2, 1979. Spokane Falls was the first major population center along the route. Continuing northward to Sandpoint, Idaho the mainline skirted Lake Pend Oreille along its west and north shore then followed the Clarks Fork River into Montana. Track laying crews from the east and west met at Gold Creek, Montana, 55 miles west of Helena where the official "Golden Spike" was driven on September 8, 1883. The nation's second transcontinental railroad was completed and the pace of settlement of the Pacific Northwest accelerated as it now had a railway linking it to the east.
The Northern Pacific grew and prospered. Its primary transcontinental route across the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains and Cascade Range from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Tacoma more than fulfilled the terms of its charter. It competed fiercely with the generally parallel route of the Great Northern to the north which extended west from the Twin Cities to Seattle, completed on January 6, 1893.
As the nation's highway network expanded with the advent of the automobile and truck, increasingly through the expansion of the Interstate Highway System from the 1950s-onwards, more and more freight was diverted away from the railroads. Standardized freight rates for the railroads by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) strangled the industry, as railroads could not effectively compete against each other or the non-regulated trucking industry. The railroads' alternative was to merge into larger entities in order to lower operating costs and lobby the government to deregulate the industry.
The railroad merger movement that began in the late 1960s and early 1970s improved their economic posture somewhat, but deregulation of the industry through the Staggers Act of 1980 saved it from long-term financial deterioration and possible nationalization by the end of the century. It was within this climate that the Northern Pacific Railway merged into Burlington Northern, Inc.
The Northern Pacific Railway passed into history when it merged into Burlington Northern, Inc. on March 3, 1970, otherwise known as "Merger Day" and began operations under the BN corporate logo. The other railroads were the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad (CB&Q), Great Northern Railway (GN) and the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway (SP&S). The Big Three were known as the "Hill Lines" with the SP&S a jointly owned subsidiary of the GN and NP.
The Wyer Report, a study completed in 1956 to merge the GN, NP, CB&Q and SP&S into a single system, formed the basis of BN's merger plan. Part of the plan included designating the former Great Northern Railway mainline across the northern tier states as the primary transcontinental line between Sandpoint, Idaho and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. The Northern Pacific Railway mainline between the same points would be downgraded to secondary main line status.
It was intended to fully implement the merger plan within three years after the merger to achieve the financial benefits from the consolidation. Many parts were delayed up to ten years because of financial strains experienced by the BN and nation's railroads due to monetary inflation mixed with a sluggish economy under a government-regulated environment. Also affecting BN was the diversion of scarce capital to upgrade its railroad feeder lines and build spurs serving open pit low-sulfur coalmines in southern Montana and Wyoming's Powder River Basin. After the Staggers Act was implemented in 1980, a severe economic recession, double-digit inflation and high fuel costs kept the railroads in a somewhat stagnated situation for the next few years.
Only in 1985 did the BN emerge as a vigorous and progressive railroad entity. In its continuing efforts to reduce overhead costs and rationalize operations, the company began spinning-off marginal main and branch lines. In conjunction with upgrading its primary northern tier mainline between Puget Sound and Minneapolis-St. Paul to accommodate international double-stack intermodal train traffic, now the industry's fastest growing commodity group, BN decided it was time to act in implementing its original merger plan on the increasingly redundant ex-NP mainline across southern Montana. The territory affected was the mainline extending east from Sandpoint, Idaho to Jones Jct., Montana. BN's mainline from there eastward through North Dakota had been revitalized since 1970 as the primary route for southern Montana and Wyoming Powder River Basin unit coal train traffic destined into Minnesota.
In preparation to downgrade the Sandpoint-Jones Jct. segment to secondary mainline status to mostly local traffic, BN began upgrading its mainline between Shelby and Laurel, called the Mossmain mainline. Pacific Northwest traffic destined to the Midwest and Southeast would then be rerouted between Sandpoint-Shelby, Shelby-Laurel and Laurel-Jones Jct. The project was discontinued shortly after it had begun due to cost overruns and engineering problems, although substantial improvements had been made. BN then decided to spin-off the Sandpoint-Jones Jct. mainline and its associated branch lines and continue routing its trains over this line as bridge traffic. By doing so it would dispose of 600-plus miles of unwanted railroad lines that included very expensive to operate Mullan and Bozeman Passes and pay only for services rendered by the new host railroad.
Washington Companies is a privately held corporation owned by Dennis Washington, a self-made billionaire from Montana. It coordinates the activities of its various companies and provides administrative services. They specialize in heavy construction, mining and engineering, marine and transportation, and heavy equipment service and support. All have their own executive and management structures.
Mr. Washington entered into negotiations with BN Inc. in 1986 to acquire its central Montana secondary mainline and various branch lines slated for spin-off. A deal was struck by early 1987 and Washington would soon acquire his first railroad under the Washington Companies umbrella. He would call it the Montana Rail because it linked Sandpoint with Jones Junction and thusly maintained the route integrity of the old NP and would now be a critical link along BN's Central Corridor between the Midwest/Southeast and the Pacific Northwest. Historically significant was an unbroken lineage with the taming and settlement of the Pacific Northwest, a heritage that can be readily seen and experienced today.
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