What Happend To MILW's St. Paul Pass?

[Racer]

What happend to The Milwaukee Road's line through St. Paul Pass in Idaho/ Montana after MILW went bankrupt? The same line that had electric catenary and had the famous "Little Joes". Did it get torn-up or does BNSF or some smaller railroad use it today?

[rob]

it's a bike trail

Rob

[AveryRdhouse]

I'll take the reigns on this one. The Milwaukee went bankrupt for the third and final time in 1977. It was plaged with too many branchlines and to little traffic. The railroad climate then was one of abandonment and everyone out there was dumping nonprofitable track. The Milwaukee management had been wanting to rid itself of the railroad since the late 60's. Milwaukee and the C&NW had tried to merge but the ICC put an end to that because of to much duplicate trackage being removed and job losses. In the BN merger in 1970, the ICC's plan was to have the Milwaukee as competion for the BN becaue they would have a monopoly out west. But, that plan soon startd to fall apart as Milw. management tried to be included in with the BN merger,again to rid itself of the railroad. The ICC shot that down withregards to the monopoly. The BN merger actually helped the Milw. for a while. New gateways where opened up and traffic from both BN and SP ran over St. Paul pass. In 1970 there was one train a day each way out west. By 1974 there was eight. Of course, with all these trains, comes ware and tare on the track. Milw was still wanting to dump the rr and didn't put much money into the line. As time went on, derailments and more competion from other rr and trucks started eating away at the carloads. Sadly enough, When the lines west of Miles City were finally abandoned, the ICC went through the books and had found that the management had been doubling up on expenses just to show a loss. The books were checked again and the same thing was found. A goup of employees tried to save the rr. They called themselves "SORE" or Save Our Rail Employment. They're goal was to buy the line and rehab it with State and Federal help. It looked like it was going to work but once again Money takes and S..t walks. The ICC caved and let the Milwaukee abandon or sell everything west of Miles City in March of 1980. And yes, Today it is preserved as The Route of the Hiawatha bike path. The Mother of all biking experiences. Been there Done that!

[Racer]

Thanks for the great info. Avery! Are the bridges along the line still in-tact or did they knock-em' down, too?

[Y@]

Some of the original bridges are still there... As well as some of the little section towns. There was a great article about it in Trains Magazine a few years ago.

[Railwidow]

Chris,

In case you you didn't realize that is Avery's passion. He has numerouse books and magazines on the topic of St. Paul Pass, not to mention all of the photos and video he has taken over the years for modeling purposes. It is also what he is modeling in our basement.
If you look under the Route of the Hiawatha you can get information on the bike trail. It is a very nice ride we have done it a few times. It has historical markers along the way so you can catch your breath while reading.

Our daughter was about 8 at the time of her 1st visit and she loved it. Especially traveling over the trestles and going thru the tunnels. She is 15 and still wants to know when we will be going again.

Here is a link to my galery of Avery's layout photos.

http://www.railroadfan.com/gallery/disp ... =421&pos=0

[MMRR-24]

it's a bike trail

uh oh. My dad is not going to like that.
Milwaukee Road is his favorite railroad.

[AveryRdhouse]

Chris. All but one of the major trestles are still there and in good shape between Alberton and Avery. The bridge across the Clark Fork river at Cyr was removed. Some of the smaller brides were taken out, but my guess is they were small enough and close to a road they could be. But for the most part all the good stuff is still there. Depots, old MoW sheds, code line poles and even afew cantenary poles are still in place. Over the pass itself, all of the tunnels and BIG trestles are there for inspection. Tunnel wise, the St. Paul pass tunnel at 8,770 feet long is the coolest. Talk about dark inside! Just outside of the tunnel is the East Portal substation ruins. Up untill a few years ago, some of the operators houses were still there. For the trestle's Kelly crk is the biggest, coming in at 220 feet tall and 850 feet long. there are 9 major trestles on the Idaho side alone. It's to bad I wasn't born twenty years earlier. I would have worked there instead. I might add that many of the former employees are still out there and the ones I have talked with are great guys. Just another case of the guy on the ground doing they're best to save the jobs and the company letting them down. Sounds like CSX.