Day 11 - Missoula MT to Plains MT

Woke up at 8am and peeped outside. What then!? Snow??? Yep, Missoula was blanketed in a thin later of snow, about an inch of the stuff, and it was still coming down. Well that was unexpected! The forecast had said rain, possibly, but apparently changed its mind during the night.

So I wriggled back into bed and got up an hour later. Packed the car, brushed off some of the snow and set off for Paradise. Paradise, Montana that is.

First stop was at a familiar spot of mine along the river, in fact I still have the location saved on my GPS it seems. I've discovered my car is a 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee. I think I've nearly doubled the miles on it.

I looked around but no trains. Never mind I did have an idea where I could find some. Then just as I was driving off I heard BNSF 5051 east being issued a track warrant from Paradise to MP33 on the 10th sub. That meant he was coming my way! I scooted up to Paradise just to check and there he was coming through the junction and onto the 10th.

He didn't really have any option actually, there was a hi-railer blocking the 4th sub. The 10th is an interesting line, as MRL have two routes leading from and to the same place. The 10th sub is shorter but steeper, especially for west bound trains. The 4th is longer, but much flatter. By sending east bound empties over the 10th, MRL can give their track crews longer on the 4th for maintenance, since it sees the bulk of the traffic.

Having confirmed he was coming my way I zoomed off and found a spot.

And here he comes. A very little train in a very big landscape. To model these mountains in N scale you'd need a two story room, as they work out at about 6 scale meters high.

Further down the road it was snowing pretty heavily.

I dropped him off here and went back towards Plains. No sooner had I started driving then I heard MRL 346 getting a warrant onto the 10th, from MP55 to MP30. Since I had just crossed MP30 I did some quick calculations and worked out when the odo read xxxx60 there would probably be a train around shortly afterwards. Sure enough there was! I shuddered to a halt and got into position just in time for the return day gas local.

Then I caught him (just! He's a quicky this one) at Dixon.

I let him go from there and headed back to Plains. I tried to find a certain photo spot but just couldn't quite locate it. I ended up driving for an extra hour just to be sure, which made no sense when I reflected on the way back. All I found were a lot of trees and a damn.

 

Also a lot of signs about bighorn sheep on the roadway… didn't see any though.

I went back and found a spot that was a little bit like the one I wanted, but still not it. I waited and read my book for a while and after a while a stack train came through.

The lighting was unfortunately utterly miserable and no amount of tweaking can make lighting like this interesting. Another train came through shortly after, this time a unit coal train. I read for a while longer then headed off and found a motel. Not the cheapest at $55 a night, but gosh it's nice! I have bunks, a queen bed, a desk, a very warm furnace heater, massive super thick curtains, a trout themed duvet, huge pillows and so on! Very homely.

For dinner I walked across the road and ordered the chicken fried steak with brown gravy. It arrived on three plates. One for the salad, one for the fries and bread, and one entire plate for the steak. It was massive! It could've fed three of me I reckon. I hardly made a dent in it and still felt like I might not make it the 20 meters back to the motel!