and the surrounding region). That year the Evergreen remanufacturing plant was temporally shuttered and a facility at Pablo, on Montana Rail Link’s now closed Polson Line, was permanently shut down. Hundreds of jobs were lost across the board. The effects were be- ing felt on the MMT as well and accord- ing to general manager Kyle Jeschke in 2008 the railroad was down to just two employees.
But the timber industry has slowly rebounded, as has the railroad, and in 2012 the Mission Mountain had five full time employees and traffic was on the rise. In the summer of 2012, the line was moving 500 cars every month and Jeschke said the number is only in- creasing. Plum Creek is by far the largest customer, but another industry that is growing is CHS Kalispell, a grain elevator downtown. Every year the elevator loads about 350 cars which carries 90 to 95 percent of the Flathead Valley’s grain harvest. In 2012, the MMT, in coordination with BNSF, was starting to deliver 48-car unit grain trains to the mill and was hoping to do so every few months. Although it pro- vides shippers with a better rate, the unit trains do cause some issues with switching in the Kalispell yard, which cuts through the heart of town. The city itself has been considering moving the railroad out of downtown and redeveloping the partly abandoned industrial corridor the railroad calls home. Now, the Flathead County Eco- nomic Development Authority is build- ing a 40-acre industrial park just east of Kalispell and is looking for ways to attract businesses to the site, including those in the city. If industries were to move out of the downtown area, it’s likely the tracks would move out too. However, it’s a plan that has the sup- port
of the railroad, according to
Jeschke, who told the Flathead Beacon in March that moving the tracks out of town would help the railroad save mon- ey. A move out of the area, however, would be a loss for railfans looking for shots of MMT’s trains threading their way through the downtown area and past the former Great Northern depot. Yet even if the shots in downtown Kalispell were to go, there are still plenty of other locations to lens the rail- road’s locals. Both lines the railroad op- erates are followed by major highways, although the line between Columbia Falls and Kalispell is considerably eas- ier to shoot, due to train frequency and the road’s proximity. Much of the route is followed by U.S. Highway 2 and the four lane road provides plenty of wide shoulders to park and shoot the action. Perhaps the best shot on the line is the small, wooden trestle just south of Co- lumbia Falls, on South Hilltop Road. As with railfanning in any new area, ac- quiring a detailed map is a must and
46 DECEMBER 2012 •
RAILFAN.COM
TOP: Although there’s less traffic on MMT’s northern line to Eureka, it warrants bigger power, in the form of GP38 No. 3807, sitting in the small yard in Eureka in the summer of 2012. ABOVE: On a rainy Monday morning in May, Levi Hubler and Dyllan Vincent look over a switch list inside the small railroad office in Columbia Falls. BELOW: WAMX No. 1214 is rarely used, but is kept as a back up engine between Columbia Falls and Kalispell. The SW1200 was originally built in 1955 for another Montana railroad, the Northern Pacific.
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