Comeback?: A cross-country trip reveals the possible future for rail service in southern Montana
Story By Justin Franz - Published in the Montana Kaimin on Jan. 29, 2010
Walking the weathered and unused platform of the old Northern Pacific Railway depot in downtown Missoula, it’s hard to imagine how busy this place once was.
But there was a time when this spot was the hub of Missoula. A time when massive steam locomotives brought seasonal visitors to western Montana. A time when the sons of a city boarded troop trains destined for the front lines of Europe. A time when traveling by rail wasn’t seen as some antiquated way of going from place to place, but the way.
That was until 1979, when Amtrak discontinued its North Coast Hiawatha passenger train between Chicago and Seattle, leaving Missoula and southern Montana with no passenger rail service.
But that could soon change if rail advocates and some local politicians get their way and Amtrak restores the service that Passenger Train Journal once called one of the greatest streamlined passenger trains ever.
Today, the only passenger train that calls on Montana is Amtrak’s Empire Builder. Once run by the Great Northern Railway, it runs between Chicago and Seattle, with part of the train breaking off in Spokane and continuing to Portland. Heading west, it runs across the Hi-Line and along the southern boundary of Glacier National Park, stopping in towns like Glasgow, Havre, Shelby and Whitefish.
Whitefish is a two-hour drive north on Highway 93 and is the closest Amtrak stop to Missoula for University of Montana students like Maggie Sullivan, who takes the train to and from her home in Minnesota, usually around the holidays. Sullivan said taking the train is cheaper than flying and although it isn’t as fast, she likes the relaxed environment on board.
The only negative is the drive, she said. Sullivan doesn’t have a car in Missoula and it can be a hassle to find someone to drive her to Whitefish.
It is shortly after 7 a.m. on Dec. 20 and I, like Sullivan and numerous other students, have made the drive north on 93 to catch the train home for the holidays. My destination will be Boston, where I’ll buy a bus ticket a few days later for the final leg home to central Maine. And while it may be a lack of caffeine, the platform in Whitefish seems as busy as its much larger counterpart at South Station in downtown Boston.
In the pre-dawn darkness, station lights reflect off the stainless steel Superliner passenger cars as Amtrak crewmembers hustle baggage and people aboard. The stop is supposed to be 20 minutes exactly and with the train on time today, the conductor is eager to keep it that way.
Lugging my backpack across the station platform, I walk to the closest door and tell the conductor I’ll be going all the way to Chicago, where I’ll be changing trains for my final ride home. He directs me up the stairs and to the left, where I find rows of sleeping passengers rolled up in awkward ways in an attempt to sleep in their reclined chairs. One of these people, from the Seattle area, wakes up when we stop and offers me the seat next to her.
Half awake myself, I thank her and throw my bag on the luggage rack above. Before I know it, the two of us have entered a daylong conversation and I barely notice when we smoothly pull out of the station, three big General Electric P42DC locomotives throttling up into the snowy darkness.
My seatmate, like me, is headed home for the holidays. She is destined for her parents’ home in Glasgow and is taking the train because it is one of the only forms of public transportation on the Hi-Line. In this part of Montana, Amtrak is more of a lifeline than a rail line.
With little else to do on board the train, Tara and I would sit and talk for the better part of the day, view an entire season of “Weeds” on her portable DVD player and watch the winter wonderland of Montana fly by our window.
The scenery is that of Glacier National Park, its tall and majestic peaks shooting skyward as if to resemble cathedrals and, even today, looking everything like those old Great Northern Railway promotional posters in the Whitefish station.
For the Great Northern Railway, the Empire Builder was a cathedral.
When those promotional posters were new, every railroad had a namesake passenger train. The Pennsylvania had the Broadway Limited, the New York Central laid claim to the 21st Century, the Rio Grande had the Zephyr and the Northern Pacific had the North Coast Limited. It was a time when railroads were proud to offer the best service and when the railroad was still a central part of American life, before the automobile and airplane and spaceship took the imagination of a nation.
But as the 1950s turned into the 60s, things began to change. Competition from highways and airlines stripped railroads of passenger revenue and by the early 1970s passenger trains were a source of pain instead of pride, standing in the way of what really made money: Freight.
So in 1971, railroads finally rid themselves of passenger rail service. From then on it would be subsidized and operated by the government, a sort of early version of today’s government bailout. The only thing the railroads would have to do was give the passenger trains a little space on the schedule. Amtrak would do the rest.
But Amtrak soon discovered what the now freight-exclusive railroads already knew: You couldn’t make money hauling passengers.
So as time went on, Amtrak rid itself of surplus or unprofitable routes, if there was even such a thing as profitable. Soon, names like the Broadway and Zephyr would fall to the pages of the past. Rich and proud history couldn’t save them now.
The North Coast Hiawatha was one of those names that faded into history.
For Amtrak, the old Northern Pacific passenger train was redundant. It ran between Chicago and Seattle–Portland just like the Empire Builder. And on Oct. 6, 1979, that redundancy became its death sentence.
If it had gone the other way, I might be riding a passenger train on the old Northern Pacific, but today I’m on board the Empire Builder as it skirts across the remote and snowbound plains of northern Montana. It is that remoteness that saved this train. People using the Hi-Line — a nickname given by locals to the towns that fall along the Great Northern and U.S. Route 2 — for public transportation are few and far between.
By now, the mountains are fading on the horizon behind us as we speed east. Mountain towns like Whitefish, Essex and East Glacier have given way to prairie towns like Browning, Cut Bank and Shelby.
At Shelby, Tara jumps off for a few moments. Her grandmother lives here and she has a Christmas present she needs to deliver. For me, it is a reminder of how much more human a passenger train seems. Try getting off a plane for a few minutes during a stop and you’re likely to be met by gun-touting government agents ready to give you an interrogation that only the likes of James Bond could deal with.
Outside, Tara gives her grandmother one last hug before jumping back on board and retaking her seat. Now we’re able to continue watching what happens to Nancy Botwin and her pot-smoking friends. For the most part, this is how the rest of our day goes.
The next stop is Havre. It’s a town that isn’t known for much, other than being the birthplace of U.S. Senator Jon Tester.
Tester has been a large proponent of the return of Amtrak to southern Montana. In a statement to the Kaimin this week, he said that its return would be beneficial to the state.
“I strongly believe expanded passenger rail service should be part of Montana’s future, and it should be a bigger part of America’s transportation infrastructure,” he said. “That’s why I directed Amtrak to look into the possibility of restoring the North Coast Hiawatha.”
That request was part of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008, which became law on Oct. 16, 2008. The document was released exactly a year later, ten days after the 30th anniversary of the North Coast Hiawatha’s last run.
Inside the 52-page document is a look at the train’s history and that of the route, as well as changes that have occurred since 1979. These changes include the amount of traffic on the route, the condition of the line, and the line’s ownership.
At the time of the last run, much of the route was owned by Burlington Northern. Today, the section between Billings and Sandpoint, Idaho, is operated by Montana Rail Link. However, Michael Ackley, a member of the National Association of Rail Passengers and an advocate for the return of passenger service for more than ten years, doesn’t believe that this will be a problem.
“Montana Rail Link has been supportive,” he said. “They haven’t said, ‘Yes, let’s get this thing going,’ but they haven’t said no.”
He said the rail company is waiting to see what happens.
The train originally ran by way of Butte and Deer Lodge, up and over the Homestake Pass route. The route was closed in the 1980s when Burlington Northern found it to be surplus due to a lull in freight traffic and because it was an operating headache, with each train requiring extra locomotives to push it over the rugged mountain grades. With this line now out of service, the new route would go by way of the state capital in Helena.
According to the study, the reinstated train could see upward of 350,000 passengers annually, including almost 70,000 who now ride the Empire Builder. The train would bring in $43 million of revenue a year, yet would cost more than $70 million to operate, meaning that the rest would likely be covered by tax payers.
However, this is only the cost to run the train and does not include the price to actually restore the service, which would reach more than $1 billion. This would cover the restoration of the track to maintain the speed of a passenger train, traffic signals to control the operation of both freight and passenger trains, rebuilding and restoration of passenger stations, and the acquisition of 18 new locomotives and 54 new passenger cars. The purchase of that new equipment would reach an estimated $330 million, but it’s a must according to the study, because Amtrak’s current equipment fleet for long-distance passenger trains like the Empire Builder is stretched far too thin.
Even with these staggering costs, Missoula City Councilmen Dave Strohmaier said it would still be possible to get train service back in Missoula. He said station improvements should be taken care of by the local communities, while track improvements between the communities must be the responsibility of the state and federal governments. But even with the large amount of work required to make this train a reality, he said it’s worth it.
“At the end of the day, in terms of funding, it’s got to be a local, state and federal partnership,” he said. “It’s obviously going to be a tough undertaking.”
But a group of Missoula area advocates, including Ackley, say the price outlined by Amtrak is higher than it should be. Ackley said the National Association of Rail Passengers worked with a railroad economist and railroaders around Montana and figured out a way to bring the price down to somewhere near $700 million. Those findings will soon be sent on to Sen. Tester’s office in Washington D.C. and the group hopes that the savings will improve the chances of passenger trains returning.
Kirk Thompson of Stevensville has contacted Tester’s office and said that when he and other Missoula area advocates met, they found many cost-saving precautions that Amtrak should look at. He said findings also show that railroads like Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Montana Rail Link should share in the costs necessary to restore the track to passenger speeds because this will benefit the freight railroads as much as it will passenger service.
Another cost-saving measure would be to combine the North Coast Hiawatha with the Empire Builder west of Spokane, which would mean Amtrak would need fewer locomotives. It also means that the train could make timely connections on the west end of its run with trains destined for California.
For Strohmaier, anything that can make this dream a reality is a good thing.
“We must seize any opportunities to establish and enhance more environmentally friendly modes of transportation,” he said. “The time has come to take another stab at it.”
He added that with what appears to be a rail-friendly administration in the White House, there has never been a better opportunity than now.
But Strohmaier is quick to add that the restoration of service must avoid one negative outcome.
“At the end of the day, our commitment is that whatever we do in southern Montana will not hurt the Empire Builder,” he said.
That same train is now rolling toward Glasgow and Tara’s final stop. As we near the station, she puts her bags in order and as the train slows, we bid farewell. Outside, her father is waiting in a pickup truck, ready to take her home to an anxious family.
As we roll out of town, the seat next to me doesn’t stay vacant long. An older fellow by the name of Art Arnold sits next to me. He’s a local farmer and is headed for New York to see his daughter for the holidays. After we exchange pleasantries, he gets up and heads for the lounge car to grab a cup of coffee.
A little while later, I do the same and find Arnold sitting in the lounge car. A quick hello turns into a long conversation about the train, life on the Hi-Line, politics and everything in between.
Arnold came from a small town about 30 miles outside of Glasgow. His choice of riding the train was more out of necessity, but he still enjoys it.
“It’s nice that you can rest on the way,” he said. “You’re rested when you get to your destination and you get to meet people. It’s relaxing.”
He added that flying can be a hassle, mainly because the closest airport to his hometown is 350 miles away.
And that is why this train still exists. Whereas the cities on the southern route have various public transportation options such as bus and air, those same options don’t exist here on the Hi-Line.
“Trains were important here,” he said. “They brought the freight and mail to all the Hi-Line communities.”
And that importance remains, especially in winter when even a simple drive can turn into something similar to the Donner Party experience, he said.
“It’s an asset to all of the communities and the general public to have this form of transportation,” he said. “Especially in a time of high energy prices.”
But while Arnold sees Amtrak as “money well spent,” he has issues with how some of the freight railroads do business.
As a farmer on the Hi-Line, Arnold said he has seen a change in freight service from a time when every little town had a grain elevator along the tracks to a time when it costs too much to move just one car of grain. This is because the railroad prefers to deal with one massive grain elevator rather than dozens of smaller ones. Because of this, farmers like Arnold have to truck their grain hundreds of miles to the larger elevator.
“They need to provide local service rather than just looking at the big picture,” he said.
Grain traffic on the railroads has never been higher, according to the Amtrak study reviewing the return of the North Coast Hiawatha. Because of an increase in coal and grain traffic across Montana, there are worries that the southern route that would host the new Amtrak train is already at capacity.
But the lack of local attention from the big freight railroads is just one of the issues facing farmers today on the Hi-Line, Arnold said. Droughts and government regulations have slowly eroded the number of working farms in the area and, in some respects, the communities are slowly dying, he said.
This conversation lasts into the night and, as interesting as it is, I can only participate so long before I begin to drift. Leaving Arnold, I make my way back to my seat a car or two down the train.
Grabbing my jacket, I curl up across my seat and the one next to me and peer out the window.
We’ve begun to slow down for another station stop and before I know it, I’m looking at a small train station next to a likewise parking lot. A few people stand on the platform waiting to climb aboard, their breath hanging in front of them.
After they board, a muffled air horn is sounded from the front of the train. From our car’s open door downstairs, an “all aboard” is heard as the doors slide shut. As the conductor swings back through the door, the three locomotives notch out and the train quickly drifts into the night. The lights of the small town get smaller the faster we go. The passenger cars’ steel wheels dance on old ribbon rail.
Suddenly my view out the window is filled with that of a passing freight train on the second track. For a minute or so, brown grain cars fly by my window, a flash of light shining through the gaps in the cars every time one passes. It’s another grain train headed west.
Somewhere in the winter of North Dakota, I fall asleep.
Hours later, my eyes fend off the coming daylight and I look out and see the industrial setting of Minneapolis. This is an extended station stop and I take the time to hop off for a few moments. But the bone-chilling cold quickly makes me regret that and I retreat inside.
It being about breakfast time, I wander toward the dining car and grab a seat. Since we’re on a train and space is at a premium, community seating is practiced and I eat with an older woman from Polson, a guy from Tillamook and a girl from Seattle.
All of them are surprisingly chatty at this early hour, especially the girl next to me. And while I’m usually just as conversational, it is a bit early for me, so most of what I contribute are nods and the occasional “oh yeah.”
The menu on board is pretty basic and features eggs and toast and the sorts. I order an omelet and minutes later a waitress puts before me a plate with a conservatively-spaced meal of omelet, potatoes and toast. At first I’m a little surprised, but then again, it is a train and you can’t bring too many pounds of potatoes across the country. But it is still better than an airplane meal and with a healthy dose of coffee — which for being on a train is a damn good cup of joe — the conversation becomes enjoyable.
After we all finish our meal and pay, we part ways so another group of passengers can get a taste of Amtrak food.
Chicago is just seven or so hours away and the small towns and farmlands of the Midwest fly by. Station stops at places like Red Wing, La Crosse and Winona give a look into a world similar to that of a John Mellencamp music video, the ones that halfway through the song suddenly become an ad for John Deere tractors or Ford trucks.
Many of these towns are similar to Missoula in size and population. La Crosse, Wis., like Missoula, is the county seat. The town’s population is almost 52,000, just a few thousand less than that of Missoula, and is part of an overall area that has well over 120,000 people.
According to the city’s mayor Mathias Harter, Amtrak service is very important to the town.
“It’s very convenient and comes right into our city,” he said. “It’s an economical way of travel that keeps us connected to other communities.”
Harter said advocates in the city are trying to rally support for rail service, but unlike Missoula, which seeks a return, La Crosse is looking for high-speed rail, meaning trains that exceed 150 miles per hour. These trains are common in Europe, but the only place in North America to see high-speed rail is between Washington D.C. and Boston, where Amtrak operates the Acela on the Northeast Corridor.
The busy corridor between Washington D.C. and Boston is the complete opposite of the scenery and setting that lies just beyond my window. While farther east, skylines of modern America dominate the landscape, here in the Midwest everything looks like a Norman Rockwell picture.
It is that nostalgic atmosphere that brought Roger Davis aboard.
Originally from Illinois, Davis lives in Seattle and works as a medical researcher. Usually his busy schedule doesn’t warrant him a lot of free time and he usually flies. But this holiday season was different, so he and his twin brother decided to take the slow way home.
“We thought it’d be fun,” Davis said. “And we have the time to kill.”
Like everyone else I’ve talked to, it’s that freedom to get up, walk around, get a meal and mingle with other passengers that has brought them on board.
“You get to see a lot of stuff that you don’t usually get to see from an airplane,” Davis said. “Plus I like stuff like this. Nostalgic-type stuff, you know?”
And it is a nostalgic form of travel that could come back to southern Montana if years of work by rail advocates becomes a reality.
While a good number of students from Missoula already make the two-hour drive north to catch the train, many more would use Amtrak as an option if it came to Missoula, said Nancy Wilson of ASUM Transportation. She has been busy getting the word out to the campus community ever since the Amtrak study was published in October of 2009.
She said student support has been overwhelming.
“Everyone is elated, everyone wants the train,” Wilson said. “I don’t think anyone is against it.”
Since October, students involved with ASUM Transportation have been out gathering signatures of support and, as of this month, they had acquired more than 1,500, most of which came from students. Wilson said that once enough have been gathered, it will be sent to Congress.
“We want Congress to know that we’re generating youth support for this,” she said.
One large force behind ASUM’s support is recent graduate Jordan Hess, who at one time held the position of ASUM Transportation Board chair. He and Wilson have been out gathering support for the project during the past few years. He said a Facebook group had been created by someone in Bozeman and, as of last week, it had well over 16,000 members. But he’s quick to add that this project won’t succeed without the help of citizens and students from all along the route, from Chicago to Seattle and Portland.
“The way we’ll get the service back is by showing strong support in all of the affected states,” he said.
To do this, ASUM President Matt Fennell sent a letter to more than two-dozen schools along the route late last year. In the letter, the environmental and economic advantages were outlined and ways to gather support were discussed.
But like many, Hess admits that the return of service will not come without a fight, especially in this economic environment with people saying that this is not money well spent. But he believes that the criticisms are poorly thought out, saying that highways and airports both receive significant government support.
“We can’t expect rail to be competitive without a little bit of help,” he said.
He also believes that those who are not fully in support of the return of passenger service will come on board if gas prices go up again.
“Fuel prices will go back up, and when that happens this will have more urgency,” he said. “I think it’s sad that we must be captive to fuel prices before we react.”
But some believe any money spent on the restoration of the North Coast Hiawatha could be better used on the improvement and expansion of high-speed rail in the country, which would affect more populated areas than South Dakota and Montana. According to Thompson, Congress has already authorized $13 billion for the advancement of high-speed rail and most of that money isn’t going to Amtrak, but rather to help states establish their own high-speed passenger rail agencies. One place that is rapidly working to gain such service is California, which set aside $10 billion for a route between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
But for Michael Ackley, the current situation is the best that rail advocates have seen since they first started gathering support for the train service almost a decade ago.
“We’ve covered so much ground in the last few years,” he said. “People can now see the reasons to return this route.”
He said this could affect many groups — including tourists, students and the elderly — favorably.
“There are so many positive things about it,” he said, adding that it would also be the first time that Amtrak reinstated a long-distance passenger train. But for this to happen, it will have to be the work of a grassroots effort, he said, one that is becoming larger and larger by the day.
“The more noise we make about this, the better,” he said.
Both Hess and Ackley said that the noise made could bring another regularly scheduled passenger train to Montana within five years. For now, the Empire Builder stands alone, running day in and day out between Chicago and Seattle and Portland.
Just a day after boarding the Empire Builder in Whitefish, I’m sitting in my seat with my bags repacked and organized, ready to detrain at our destination of Chicago Union Station.
As the train slowly weaves through switches and turnouts to align itself on the correct track, the skyline emerges from the foggy shadows. Over the intercom, the conductor announces “Chicago, last stop,” and relays a message that has been uttered by crewmembers countless times in the last few days:
“We know you have options for travel, and we appreciate that you’ve chosen Amtrak.”
Walking the weathered and unused platform of the old Northern Pacific Railway depot in downtown Missoula, it’s hard to imagine how busy this place once was.
But there was a time when this spot was the hub of Missoula. A time when massive steam locomotives brought seasonal visitors to western Montana. A time when the sons of a city boarded troop trains destined for the front lines of Europe. A time when traveling by rail wasn’t seen as some antiquated way of going from place to place, but the way.
That was until 1979, when Amtrak discontinued its North Coast Hiawatha passenger train between Chicago and Seattle, leaving Missoula and southern Montana with no passenger rail service.
But that could soon change if rail advocates and some local politicians get their way and Amtrak restores the service that Passenger Train Journal once called one of the greatest streamlined passenger trains ever.
Today, the only passenger train that calls on Montana is Amtrak’s Empire Builder. Once run by the Great Northern Railway, it runs between Chicago and Seattle, with part of the train breaking off in Spokane and continuing to Portland. Heading west, it runs across the Hi-Line and along the southern boundary of Glacier National Park, stopping in towns like Glasgow, Havre, Shelby and Whitefish.
Whitefish is a two-hour drive north on Highway 93 and is the closest Amtrak stop to Missoula for University of Montana students like Maggie Sullivan, who takes the train to and from her home in Minnesota, usually around the holidays. Sullivan said taking the train is cheaper than flying and although it isn’t as fast, she likes the relaxed environment on board.
The only negative is the drive, she said. Sullivan doesn’t have a car in Missoula and it can be a hassle to find someone to drive her to Whitefish.
It is shortly after 7 a.m. on Dec. 20 and I, like Sullivan and numerous other students, have made the drive north on 93 to catch the train home for the holidays. My destination will be Boston, where I’ll buy a bus ticket a few days later for the final leg home to central Maine. And while it may be a lack of caffeine, the platform in Whitefish seems as busy as its much larger counterpart at South Station in downtown Boston.
In the pre-dawn darkness, station lights reflect off the stainless steel Superliner passenger cars as Amtrak crewmembers hustle baggage and people aboard. The stop is supposed to be 20 minutes exactly and with the train on time today, the conductor is eager to keep it that way.
Lugging my backpack across the station platform, I walk to the closest door and tell the conductor I’ll be going all the way to Chicago, where I’ll be changing trains for my final ride home. He directs me up the stairs and to the left, where I find rows of sleeping passengers rolled up in awkward ways in an attempt to sleep in their reclined chairs. One of these people, from the Seattle area, wakes up when we stop and offers me the seat next to her.
Half awake myself, I thank her and throw my bag on the luggage rack above. Before I know it, the two of us have entered a daylong conversation and I barely notice when we smoothly pull out of the station, three big General Electric P42DC locomotives throttling up into the snowy darkness.
My seatmate, like me, is headed home for the holidays. She is destined for her parents’ home in Glasgow and is taking the train because it is one of the only forms of public transportation on the Hi-Line. In this part of Montana, Amtrak is more of a lifeline than a rail line.
With little else to do on board the train, Tara and I would sit and talk for the better part of the day, view an entire season of “Weeds” on her portable DVD player and watch the winter wonderland of Montana fly by our window.
The scenery is that of Glacier National Park, its tall and majestic peaks shooting skyward as if to resemble cathedrals and, even today, looking everything like those old Great Northern Railway promotional posters in the Whitefish station.
For the Great Northern Railway, the Empire Builder was a cathedral.
When those promotional posters were new, every railroad had a namesake passenger train. The Pennsylvania had the Broadway Limited, the New York Central laid claim to the 21st Century, the Rio Grande had the Zephyr and the Northern Pacific had the North Coast Limited. It was a time when railroads were proud to offer the best service and when the railroad was still a central part of American life, before the automobile and airplane and spaceship took the imagination of a nation.
But as the 1950s turned into the 60s, things began to change. Competition from highways and airlines stripped railroads of passenger revenue and by the early 1970s passenger trains were a source of pain instead of pride, standing in the way of what really made money: Freight.
So in 1971, railroads finally rid themselves of passenger rail service. From then on it would be subsidized and operated by the government, a sort of early version of today’s government bailout. The only thing the railroads would have to do was give the passenger trains a little space on the schedule. Amtrak would do the rest.
But Amtrak soon discovered what the now freight-exclusive railroads already knew: You couldn’t make money hauling passengers.
So as time went on, Amtrak rid itself of surplus or unprofitable routes, if there was even such a thing as profitable. Soon, names like the Broadway and Zephyr would fall to the pages of the past. Rich and proud history couldn’t save them now.
The North Coast Hiawatha was one of those names that faded into history.
For Amtrak, the old Northern Pacific passenger train was redundant. It ran between Chicago and Seattle–Portland just like the Empire Builder. And on Oct. 6, 1979, that redundancy became its death sentence.
If it had gone the other way, I might be riding a passenger train on the old Northern Pacific, but today I’m on board the Empire Builder as it skirts across the remote and snowbound plains of northern Montana. It is that remoteness that saved this train. People using the Hi-Line — a nickname given by locals to the towns that fall along the Great Northern and U.S. Route 2 — for public transportation are few and far between.
By now, the mountains are fading on the horizon behind us as we speed east. Mountain towns like Whitefish, Essex and East Glacier have given way to prairie towns like Browning, Cut Bank and Shelby.
At Shelby, Tara jumps off for a few moments. Her grandmother lives here and she has a Christmas present she needs to deliver. For me, it is a reminder of how much more human a passenger train seems. Try getting off a plane for a few minutes during a stop and you’re likely to be met by gun-touting government agents ready to give you an interrogation that only the likes of James Bond could deal with.
Outside, Tara gives her grandmother one last hug before jumping back on board and retaking her seat. Now we’re able to continue watching what happens to Nancy Botwin and her pot-smoking friends. For the most part, this is how the rest of our day goes.
The next stop is Havre. It’s a town that isn’t known for much, other than being the birthplace of U.S. Senator Jon Tester.
Tester has been a large proponent of the return of Amtrak to southern Montana. In a statement to the Kaimin this week, he said that its return would be beneficial to the state.
“I strongly believe expanded passenger rail service should be part of Montana’s future, and it should be a bigger part of America’s transportation infrastructure,” he said. “That’s why I directed Amtrak to look into the possibility of restoring the North Coast Hiawatha.”
That request was part of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008, which became law on Oct. 16, 2008. The document was released exactly a year later, ten days after the 30th anniversary of the North Coast Hiawatha’s last run.
Inside the 52-page document is a look at the train’s history and that of the route, as well as changes that have occurred since 1979. These changes include the amount of traffic on the route, the condition of the line, and the line’s ownership.
At the time of the last run, much of the route was owned by Burlington Northern. Today, the section between Billings and Sandpoint, Idaho, is operated by Montana Rail Link. However, Michael Ackley, a member of the National Association of Rail Passengers and an advocate for the return of passenger service for more than ten years, doesn’t believe that this will be a problem.
“Montana Rail Link has been supportive,” he said. “They haven’t said, ‘Yes, let’s get this thing going,’ but they haven’t said no.”
He said the rail company is waiting to see what happens.
The train originally ran by way of Butte and Deer Lodge, up and over the Homestake Pass route. The route was closed in the 1980s when Burlington Northern found it to be surplus due to a lull in freight traffic and because it was an operating headache, with each train requiring extra locomotives to push it over the rugged mountain grades. With this line now out of service, the new route would go by way of the state capital in Helena.
According to the study, the reinstated train could see upward of 350,000 passengers annually, including almost 70,000 who now ride the Empire Builder. The train would bring in $43 million of revenue a year, yet would cost more than $70 million to operate, meaning that the rest would likely be covered by tax payers.
However, this is only the cost to run the train and does not include the price to actually restore the service, which would reach more than $1 billion. This would cover the restoration of the track to maintain the speed of a passenger train, traffic signals to control the operation of both freight and passenger trains, rebuilding and restoration of passenger stations, and the acquisition of 18 new locomotives and 54 new passenger cars. The purchase of that new equipment would reach an estimated $330 million, but it’s a must according to the study, because Amtrak’s current equipment fleet for long-distance passenger trains like the Empire Builder is stretched far too thin.
Even with these staggering costs, Missoula City Councilmen Dave Strohmaier said it would still be possible to get train service back in Missoula. He said station improvements should be taken care of by the local communities, while track improvements between the communities must be the responsibility of the state and federal governments. But even with the large amount of work required to make this train a reality, he said it’s worth it.
“At the end of the day, in terms of funding, it’s got to be a local, state and federal partnership,” he said. “It’s obviously going to be a tough undertaking.”
But a group of Missoula area advocates, including Ackley, say the price outlined by Amtrak is higher than it should be. Ackley said the National Association of Rail Passengers worked with a railroad economist and railroaders around Montana and figured out a way to bring the price down to somewhere near $700 million. Those findings will soon be sent on to Sen. Tester’s office in Washington D.C. and the group hopes that the savings will improve the chances of passenger trains returning.
Kirk Thompson of Stevensville has contacted Tester’s office and said that when he and other Missoula area advocates met, they found many cost-saving precautions that Amtrak should look at. He said findings also show that railroads like Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Montana Rail Link should share in the costs necessary to restore the track to passenger speeds because this will benefit the freight railroads as much as it will passenger service.
Another cost-saving measure would be to combine the North Coast Hiawatha with the Empire Builder west of Spokane, which would mean Amtrak would need fewer locomotives. It also means that the train could make timely connections on the west end of its run with trains destined for California.
For Strohmaier, anything that can make this dream a reality is a good thing.
“We must seize any opportunities to establish and enhance more environmentally friendly modes of transportation,” he said. “The time has come to take another stab at it.”
He added that with what appears to be a rail-friendly administration in the White House, there has never been a better opportunity than now.
But Strohmaier is quick to add that the restoration of service must avoid one negative outcome.
“At the end of the day, our commitment is that whatever we do in southern Montana will not hurt the Empire Builder,” he said.
That same train is now rolling toward Glasgow and Tara’s final stop. As we near the station, she puts her bags in order and as the train slows, we bid farewell. Outside, her father is waiting in a pickup truck, ready to take her home to an anxious family.
As we roll out of town, the seat next to me doesn’t stay vacant long. An older fellow by the name of Art Arnold sits next to me. He’s a local farmer and is headed for New York to see his daughter for the holidays. After we exchange pleasantries, he gets up and heads for the lounge car to grab a cup of coffee.
A little while later, I do the same and find Arnold sitting in the lounge car. A quick hello turns into a long conversation about the train, life on the Hi-Line, politics and everything in between.
Arnold came from a small town about 30 miles outside of Glasgow. His choice of riding the train was more out of necessity, but he still enjoys it.
“It’s nice that you can rest on the way,” he said. “You’re rested when you get to your destination and you get to meet people. It’s relaxing.”
He added that flying can be a hassle, mainly because the closest airport to his hometown is 350 miles away.
And that is why this train still exists. Whereas the cities on the southern route have various public transportation options such as bus and air, those same options don’t exist here on the Hi-Line.
“Trains were important here,” he said. “They brought the freight and mail to all the Hi-Line communities.”
And that importance remains, especially in winter when even a simple drive can turn into something similar to the Donner Party experience, he said.
“It’s an asset to all of the communities and the general public to have this form of transportation,” he said. “Especially in a time of high energy prices.”
But while Arnold sees Amtrak as “money well spent,” he has issues with how some of the freight railroads do business.
As a farmer on the Hi-Line, Arnold said he has seen a change in freight service from a time when every little town had a grain elevator along the tracks to a time when it costs too much to move just one car of grain. This is because the railroad prefers to deal with one massive grain elevator rather than dozens of smaller ones. Because of this, farmers like Arnold have to truck their grain hundreds of miles to the larger elevator.
“They need to provide local service rather than just looking at the big picture,” he said.
Grain traffic on the railroads has never been higher, according to the Amtrak study reviewing the return of the North Coast Hiawatha. Because of an increase in coal and grain traffic across Montana, there are worries that the southern route that would host the new Amtrak train is already at capacity.
But the lack of local attention from the big freight railroads is just one of the issues facing farmers today on the Hi-Line, Arnold said. Droughts and government regulations have slowly eroded the number of working farms in the area and, in some respects, the communities are slowly dying, he said.
This conversation lasts into the night and, as interesting as it is, I can only participate so long before I begin to drift. Leaving Arnold, I make my way back to my seat a car or two down the train.
Grabbing my jacket, I curl up across my seat and the one next to me and peer out the window.
We’ve begun to slow down for another station stop and before I know it, I’m looking at a small train station next to a likewise parking lot. A few people stand on the platform waiting to climb aboard, their breath hanging in front of them.
After they board, a muffled air horn is sounded from the front of the train. From our car’s open door downstairs, an “all aboard” is heard as the doors slide shut. As the conductor swings back through the door, the three locomotives notch out and the train quickly drifts into the night. The lights of the small town get smaller the faster we go. The passenger cars’ steel wheels dance on old ribbon rail.
Suddenly my view out the window is filled with that of a passing freight train on the second track. For a minute or so, brown grain cars fly by my window, a flash of light shining through the gaps in the cars every time one passes. It’s another grain train headed west.
Somewhere in the winter of North Dakota, I fall asleep.
Hours later, my eyes fend off the coming daylight and I look out and see the industrial setting of Minneapolis. This is an extended station stop and I take the time to hop off for a few moments. But the bone-chilling cold quickly makes me regret that and I retreat inside.
It being about breakfast time, I wander toward the dining car and grab a seat. Since we’re on a train and space is at a premium, community seating is practiced and I eat with an older woman from Polson, a guy from Tillamook and a girl from Seattle.
All of them are surprisingly chatty at this early hour, especially the girl next to me. And while I’m usually just as conversational, it is a bit early for me, so most of what I contribute are nods and the occasional “oh yeah.”
The menu on board is pretty basic and features eggs and toast and the sorts. I order an omelet and minutes later a waitress puts before me a plate with a conservatively-spaced meal of omelet, potatoes and toast. At first I’m a little surprised, but then again, it is a train and you can’t bring too many pounds of potatoes across the country. But it is still better than an airplane meal and with a healthy dose of coffee — which for being on a train is a damn good cup of joe — the conversation becomes enjoyable.
After we all finish our meal and pay, we part ways so another group of passengers can get a taste of Amtrak food.
Chicago is just seven or so hours away and the small towns and farmlands of the Midwest fly by. Station stops at places like Red Wing, La Crosse and Winona give a look into a world similar to that of a John Mellencamp music video, the ones that halfway through the song suddenly become an ad for John Deere tractors or Ford trucks.
Many of these towns are similar to Missoula in size and population. La Crosse, Wis., like Missoula, is the county seat. The town’s population is almost 52,000, just a few thousand less than that of Missoula, and is part of an overall area that has well over 120,000 people.
According to the city’s mayor Mathias Harter, Amtrak service is very important to the town.
“It’s very convenient and comes right into our city,” he said. “It’s an economical way of travel that keeps us connected to other communities.”
Harter said advocates in the city are trying to rally support for rail service, but unlike Missoula, which seeks a return, La Crosse is looking for high-speed rail, meaning trains that exceed 150 miles per hour. These trains are common in Europe, but the only place in North America to see high-speed rail is between Washington D.C. and Boston, where Amtrak operates the Acela on the Northeast Corridor.
The busy corridor between Washington D.C. and Boston is the complete opposite of the scenery and setting that lies just beyond my window. While farther east, skylines of modern America dominate the landscape, here in the Midwest everything looks like a Norman Rockwell picture.
It is that nostalgic atmosphere that brought Roger Davis aboard.
Originally from Illinois, Davis lives in Seattle and works as a medical researcher. Usually his busy schedule doesn’t warrant him a lot of free time and he usually flies. But this holiday season was different, so he and his twin brother decided to take the slow way home.
“We thought it’d be fun,” Davis said. “And we have the time to kill.”
Like everyone else I’ve talked to, it’s that freedom to get up, walk around, get a meal and mingle with other passengers that has brought them on board.
“You get to see a lot of stuff that you don’t usually get to see from an airplane,” Davis said. “Plus I like stuff like this. Nostalgic-type stuff, you know?”
And it is a nostalgic form of travel that could come back to southern Montana if years of work by rail advocates becomes a reality.
While a good number of students from Missoula already make the two-hour drive north to catch the train, many more would use Amtrak as an option if it came to Missoula, said Nancy Wilson of ASUM Transportation. She has been busy getting the word out to the campus community ever since the Amtrak study was published in October of 2009.
She said student support has been overwhelming.
“Everyone is elated, everyone wants the train,” Wilson said. “I don’t think anyone is against it.”
Since October, students involved with ASUM Transportation have been out gathering signatures of support and, as of this month, they had acquired more than 1,500, most of which came from students. Wilson said that once enough have been gathered, it will be sent to Congress.
“We want Congress to know that we’re generating youth support for this,” she said.
One large force behind ASUM’s support is recent graduate Jordan Hess, who at one time held the position of ASUM Transportation Board chair. He and Wilson have been out gathering support for the project during the past few years. He said a Facebook group had been created by someone in Bozeman and, as of last week, it had well over 16,000 members. But he’s quick to add that this project won’t succeed without the help of citizens and students from all along the route, from Chicago to Seattle and Portland.
“The way we’ll get the service back is by showing strong support in all of the affected states,” he said.
To do this, ASUM President Matt Fennell sent a letter to more than two-dozen schools along the route late last year. In the letter, the environmental and economic advantages were outlined and ways to gather support were discussed.
But like many, Hess admits that the return of service will not come without a fight, especially in this economic environment with people saying that this is not money well spent. But he believes that the criticisms are poorly thought out, saying that highways and airports both receive significant government support.
“We can’t expect rail to be competitive without a little bit of help,” he said.
He also believes that those who are not fully in support of the return of passenger service will come on board if gas prices go up again.
“Fuel prices will go back up, and when that happens this will have more urgency,” he said. “I think it’s sad that we must be captive to fuel prices before we react.”
But some believe any money spent on the restoration of the North Coast Hiawatha could be better used on the improvement and expansion of high-speed rail in the country, which would affect more populated areas than South Dakota and Montana. According to Thompson, Congress has already authorized $13 billion for the advancement of high-speed rail and most of that money isn’t going to Amtrak, but rather to help states establish their own high-speed passenger rail agencies. One place that is rapidly working to gain such service is California, which set aside $10 billion for a route between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
But for Michael Ackley, the current situation is the best that rail advocates have seen since they first started gathering support for the train service almost a decade ago.
“We’ve covered so much ground in the last few years,” he said. “People can now see the reasons to return this route.”
He said this could affect many groups — including tourists, students and the elderly — favorably.
“There are so many positive things about it,” he said, adding that it would also be the first time that Amtrak reinstated a long-distance passenger train. But for this to happen, it will have to be the work of a grassroots effort, he said, one that is becoming larger and larger by the day.
“The more noise we make about this, the better,” he said.
Both Hess and Ackley said that the noise made could bring another regularly scheduled passenger train to Montana within five years. For now, the Empire Builder stands alone, running day in and day out between Chicago and Seattle and Portland.
Just a day after boarding the Empire Builder in Whitefish, I’m sitting in my seat with my bags repacked and organized, ready to detrain at our destination of Chicago Union Station.
As the train slowly weaves through switches and turnouts to align itself on the correct track, the skyline emerges from the foggy shadows. Over the intercom, the conductor announces “Chicago, last stop,” and relays a message that has been uttered by crewmembers countless times in the last few days:
“We know you have options for travel, and we appreciate that you’ve chosen Amtrak.”