03.11.07
Scenes from a writer’s journey
Here, for readers of this blog who are sufficiently discerning and civilized to be aficionadoes of rail travel, is a gallery of the photos I took on my writing trip to Essex, Montana, last week on Amtrak’s Empire Builder:
March 5: The lead P42 locomotive of the Empire Builder arrives at Glenview, Illinois, to begin the two-day, one-night journey to Essex, Montana.
Fortunately scenes of the Rust Belt’s blighted industrial backside (here in Milwaukee) were infrequent.
A far more pleasant view from my sleeper window was the bucolic countryside of southern Wisconsin.
March 6: Shortly after traversing Minnesota during the night, the Builder stopped to be serviced at Minot, North Dakota.
At Minot the train’s two locomotives took deep draughts of diesel fuel.
Heavy snowdrifts marked the High Line of the former Great Northern Railway across most of North Dakota.
For many miles there was nothing to see on the vast and lonely High Plains, but as the train wended west the snow cover dwindled.
As the train approached the Montana state line a few isolated cattle ranches came into view.
For a time the High Line closely paralleled two-lane U.S. 2, the only east-west artery across the top of the United States.
By the badlands of eastern Montana most of the snow had disappeared and temperatures were climbing.
At Havre in the center of Montana, we spilled out for the service stop in our shirtsleeves in sunny 60-degree weather.
March 7: The Izaak Walton Inn at Essex, Montana, on the western edge of Glacier National Park, where I holed up for three days to write.
The lobby of the Izaak Walton, a fine place for conversation and a glass of wine before dinner.
Another view of the lobby, facing toward the front desk. Note the table sawn from a section of a mighty pine log.
Inside the Izaak Walton’s Dining Car restaurant, featuring Great Northern memorabilia and first-rate Rocky Mountain brook trout.
Everywhere in the hotel lies railroad memorabilia, including this fanciful two-foot-long wooden locomotive in a window.
On the mountain on the other side of the tracks, the Izaak Walton rents out cabooses that sleep four adults.
March 8: Essex is a splendid place for railfanning, or trainspotting as the British say. This is the eastbound Empire Builder.
A long string of brand new grain hopper cars led by a trio of 4,400-horsepower GE C44-9W locomotives climbs past the helper engine yard at Essex, right in front of the Izaak Walton Inn.
The same freight train from the other side of the walkway bridge over the tracks from the inn to the rental cabooses and cross-country ski trail on the mountain.
One of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s rare, rebuilt GP30 locomotives (now called a “GP39m” by the BNSF), built in 1961 but still in secondary service at Essex.
One of the pleasures of viewing operations in the helper yard is watching switchmen (switchpersons?) do their thing.
Another switchman at work, this time aboard a GP38-2 in the helper yard.
A plow-flanger leaves the yard, pushed by a GP39m/GP38-2 lashup, to clear the snow at Marias Pass southeast of Essex.
March 9: As I waited on the “platform” at Essex for my ride east, a heavy freight entered the passing track at right.
The eastbound Empire Builder coasts into Essex to pick up passengers. Yes, that’s the station — a snow-covered pile of asphalt and cinders.
Aboard the Builder the lounge car was the place to be as the train passed Glacier National Park just east of Essex.
The southern wall of Glacier Park, just before the Continental Divide.
My last view of the mountains at East Glacier Park, where in past years my family debarked the Empire Builder to stay in the Glacier Park Lodge in the foreground.
Soon it was time for lunch in the dining car, one of the most important events of anyone’s trip on the Empire Builder.
