Montana trip

Hi, Friend Steve Salamon and I traveled to Spokane, WA on September 20 with the objective of exploring and photographing operations on Montana Railink between Sandpoint, ID and Laurel, MT.

After landing in Spokane in the early afternoon we headed north. Along the way we photographed this meet in Austin, WA.

About 10 years ago BNSF built a fueling facility and small yard used for block swapping at Hauser, ID.  This westbound was sitting at the west end of the yard.

Our main quarry for the day was the bridge across Lake Pend Oreille (above and two below).

There is a nice morning view of the bridge I found on a trip about 25 years ago (above and three below).

A mixed freight closely followed the grain train shown above just off the bridge with Lake Pend Oreille in the background.

We chased this mixed freight catching it at Cocallala, ID

and Granite, ID. As the weather forecast for eastern Idaho and Montana was for clouds with about 50% chance of rain but was for partly cloudy for Washington we decided to head west.

After lunch in the Spokane area it was westward ho on I-90 and then north to the former Great Northern tracks. As we left Spokane there was a stack train departing and we thought it would come this way. Sure enough it showed up at Mohler, WA about a half hour after we did.

We followed the stack train until it stopped at Odessa, WA. Eventually we figured out the train would die here as we watched the crew being taken off; so we continued west.

We were surprised by an eastbound at Wilson Creek, WA (above and below) but were able to double back for this shot.

Our final photograph was of a pair of DPUs on the rear of a stack train climbing through Lynch Coulee near Trinidad, WA.  Thanks for looking.