North Montana Line - Milwaukee Road

[landnrailroader]

I have set aside the Cumberland Valley Div. for a while and have gone back to the Milwaukee Road, N. Montana Line. Since I included around 30 miles or so of the former GN between Judith Gap and Moccasin in order to show the current connections, I have gone ahead and put in street grids for Hobson & Moccasin and I have grabbed all of Ron Picardi's grain elevators etc. Hard to believe, he did those in 2002, 23 years ago and they are still quite useful. I do not plan to complete this, or likely any of my remaining routes but I will release them without any errors that would prevent creation of at least test activities and I do plan to install mileposts. In the case of the current route, none of it was signaled except for a little around Harlowton and Great Falls and for the most part only crossbucks were used at crossings although where I could determine it, I have put in markers like RX-FLS for flashers, RX-FLSG for flashers and gates, and RX_FLSGC for flashers, gates, & cantilevers. In the case of some of the town grids, it may be better for the artists among us to paint in some streets. Today, I started at Harlowton, working north & west, to clean things up a bit, add some grain elevators etc., and put in street grids. So the image is of the grid for Moore, MT looking more or less MOORE_GRID.jpgsoutheast. Moore was served by the Milwaukee Road and after the demise and abandonment of that line in the early '80s, BN(SF) built a connecting track some 2 miles in length and then merged their new track onto the old Milwaukee main with about a 10 degree curve. I used a turnout so that this route can be back dated to before 1980 and operated solely as a Milwaukee Road line, or later with BNSF making this connection which may also have allowed them to serve Lewistown but now it appears that the tracks are gone not far northeast of Moore. Further northwest at Moccasin, the Central Montana operates over another BNSF line that served Lewistown in the old days in order to provide their connection to the outside world. This connection also allowed the old GN to use the Milwaukee Road by trackage rights to reach Lewistown. Those who grab this route for completion need to take a look at the Google Earth aerials. This is almost all grain lands and so fenced right of way is used. Although there is open range land in Montana, there is not much along this line.

Jerry

[landnrailroader]

Friends,

Today, I inserted 90+ mileposts along the main stem of the branch from Harlowton to Denton. This line is around 280 miles from Harlowton through Great Falls to Agawam and in the images we see a detouring Olympian Hiawatha. Well if things had worked out for the original planners this could have been real, but alas, it was not to be, so this train will come to a dead end at Agawam, MT. As planned this extension was to go from Harlowton through Great Falls, Agawam, and then over a lower pass than Pipestone to drop down into the Clark Fork valley and connect to the branch that reached northeast from Bonner, MT (a few miles east of Missoula). This branch was included in the RMD-West route. But it was not to be, finances were stretched too thin, and the first bankruptcy occurred, so the GF line remained an expensive branch. It was also sort of a seasonal branch too because grain of various kinds was the main commodity. Years ago, there were often pictures of what would later be called unit trains of grain and a favorite location was the trestles and tunnels around Belt Creek a few miles east of Great Falls. With drones still in the future, these were taken from low flying aircraft. At the moment as I install the mileposts, I am checking the route looking for visual issues. I have installed grain elevators where there should be some, i.e. just about everywhere, and a few stations still remain. The line was operated by train orders and had no power turnouts. I guess that toward the end, radio may have been used. The line was abandoned after the spring of 1980 except for about 100 miles that is operated by the Central Montana RR and another few miles operated by BNSF.
Many railroads show mile posts numbered from the origin point. For example, nearly all L&N mileposts are numbered with ZERO at Louisville, KY. However, on the Milwaukee Road most branches started at zero when they diverged from a mainline or another branch. Hence, mile zero on the GF line is at Harlowton, MT while the branch east out of Lewistown starts with zero at the junction from the GF line. The center shows the train leaving Harlowton. The left shows the wide open spaces and the right is inside the lounge car.

Jerry Screenshot 2025-04-11 164410.png Screenshot 2025-04-11 123801.png Screenshot 2025-04-11 164528.png

[CSRX]

I feel like a lot of railroads turned to doing their mileposts that way. I know for a long time, Maine Central did theirs with two sets, one side of the marker would show P for miles from Portland, and the other would show V for miles from Vanceboro, or SJ for St. Johnsbury. I am unsure how they did the branch lines, though, I imagine R was miles from Rumford, Q was miles from Quebec, F miles from Farmington, so on and so on..

Now, they are set from Mattawamkeag at 0, Portland being 200. Branch Lines are starting at 0, but I believe before CSX took over, Pan Am was using "R" for Rumford Mile Posts, "H" for Hinckley Mileposts, "A" for Madison, etc, on paper at least. The mileposts themselves simply just had the numbers.

Anyways.
Looking forward to another Montana based route!

[landnrailroader]

An error has turned up just west of Lewistown and I have posted the error log and the full log file on another group. But then I created a new path starting a mile or so west of where the error occurs and things are fine. I am so far just using explore mode so only the first patch in a list is used. So here are two scenes. In one, on a wood trestle, the train is coming to what is now the location of a dinner train and this trestle and all track east (i.e. to the right) is history. In the other, on a steel trestle, we are crossing the Judith River. A major flood a few years back damaged the foundations of this trestle at the west end. effectivly land-locking the Central Montana RR which now works this line as far east as the dinner train location and then over a few miles of GN track from there to Moccasin which is their link to the outside world. The bridge was so crucial & the railroad so critical to the local economy that the bridge was repaired. Notice that there are no horizontal stiffeners in the steel bridge. All Milwaukee Road trestles were done this way and I know only 1 other on the former Tennessee Central and a few on the former N&W line from St. Paul, VA to Norton, VA. Note the distortion seen is not in the simulation but is done by the image capture. Both trestles are quite tall but not so wide at the ground as seen here.

Jerry Screenshot 2025-04-12 154345.png Screenshot 2025-04-12 153731.png

[landnrailroader]

I have sent the route to a member that volunteered to try to find the problem, so I will set this one aside until word comes about that. This area of Montana, while it appears to be flat is actually a series of rolling hills or ridges and train handling will be a challenge for activity creators. You may have a mile or two of ascending grade, usually less than 1%, then a hundred meters or so of flat, and then descending, and this just repeats a lot. Judith River, Indian Creek, and Sage Creek are in deep wide valleys compared to the surrounding terrain and so long high viaducts were required to bridge them. Likewise around Belt Creek and that area also has tunnels. One tunnel is seen in a cut, well this is really the case but not planned that way. Over the years, the terrain over Ampitheatre tunnel slid away & eroded until the whole tunnel lining was visible and trains still ran through it. After abandonment some of the sections have fallen away so now it is not continuous. And then a few miles west of Arrow Creek, there is a long descent into a sort of box canyon, then a sharp reversal curve and the grade continues down at 1%-1.4% for several miles. The current railroad ends a few hundred feet west of the Geraldine elevators, marking the end of the Central Montana RR. Those who do activities will need to keep track of location very carefully because things change from easy to difficult to easy on this route A LOT! At the top of this descent, west of Arrow Creek there is a short cut on a left-hand (going west) curve. This was once a tunnel. It was daylighted a long time ago.

Jerry

[mnowosad]

Hello, I'm testing the route in OR unstable, Tsre5 and OR Track Viewer - I removed the switch and parts of the roads deep below the ground surface. Tomorrow more tests.
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[landnrailroader]

Yes, I would not have thought that would have hurt things. Most of the track was done with MSTS a few years ago. The area you found those bad items is between Moore and Lewistown. I did do most of the roads and most of the branchlines with TSRE and I had just finished removing the deep sixed items from another route and intended to do this one next. You can find track pieces but not roads with TrackViewer, which I use for that purpose. The trestle shown is about 3 miles further west from the point of failure when I was testing.

Just to check things, I located that turnout and those 2 road & 1 track pieces and deleted them. Then I started an activity westbound at about mile 60. The previous error message still occurred almost exactly at mile 68. The mentioned items were several miles east of Lewistown, or about 20 miles east of the failure point.

[landnrailroader]

I have now run a activity from mile 70 to Great Falls, mile 200 with no errors. I did see some things to fix but nothing that generated an error. Approaching GF from the east, the first major item we encounter is Malmstrom AFB which is no longer a place for aircraft and the runways are closed but apparently it is still a HQ for missiles. Several years ago a lad worked in my group at CSX who had served there sometime prior. He was a black man from Georgia, which is critical because he said that GF was no place for a black boy from Georgia who feared his manhood might get frozen. So the view of structures ahead to the left is as one approached Malmstrom. The next which shows structures to the right is the small Milwaukee Road yard at GF which is famous because it was the first use of electrification. The citizens of GF did not like smoke from steam engines so very early, and before the mainline electrification, this yard and the tracks on downtown were electrified. And finally the other image is of the train stopped at the GF depot. which needs to be lowered a few meters. Most of these structures were done by Michael Stefan and he has included them in a freeware package in the library. As mentioned I copied his GF area into the route and it is well detailed although whoever finishes this route will probably make adjustments there. I'll hold off on fixing those things I noticed until I see what is found about the known failure.

Jerry Screenshot 2025-04-15 123445.png Screenshot 2025-04-15 123912.png Screenshot 2025-04-15 124544.png

[baldwin]

Track viewer will show roads if selected in Track items. It will show roads, crossings and car spawners if required.

[landnrailroader]

I did not know that. That will be a great help on the Montana line & others.
Thanks,

Jerry

[mnowosad]

Attempts to remove incorrect roads under the terrain. Starting the route in MSTS.
Attempts to start the Route in MSTS-RE after removing the incorrect entry in the ref file in line 5510.
Attempt to start rebuilding the database in MSTS RE - error in placing roads in tile -12405 14698 .

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[landnrailroader]

The error in line 5510 is a missing space and ( after the word static. However, I could not use that item anyway as it was too big, that entire entry can just be deleted. What I needed was a metal building covering 3 tracks & about 60 meters in length with the tracks spaced a bit more than Kuju width. It was going to be the CMRR diesel house in Denton and I will have to create it.

Evidently the ref. file error was not the problem, as it still occurs at the same spot. My guess is that a world file loads at that point and this world file has an error or corruption in it, but what? And if I start a activity a short ways beyond this failure point and it runs for over 100 miles, then does this mean that the affected world file, if that is what it is, does not load, or? I would hate to release an incomplete route with a error in it.

Jerry

[jasonjedi1]

Did this error corrupt the route?

[landnrailroader]

I depends on what one means by corrupt. The route loads fine, and you can create a path from end to end. Then when you run an activity, starting for example at Harlowton, or anywhere east of about mile 67, it will work fine until it suddenly crashes at around mile 68. Running in the opposite direction, causes an error around mile 69. If you start west beyond about mile 68, or east beyond mile 69 you can go all the way to the end. My guess is that there is a corrupt item on the world file that loads at that point but when I use TSRE with all world files loaded, there is no error seen.

Jerry

[jasonjedi1]

That's unfortunate. I had the same issue doing some mods on the coast division. More or less had to manually delete everything from the faulty world file to make it work again. Was a PITA and very tedious. Hopefully this issue doesn't prevent a release one day.