Day 12 - Plains MT to Cut Bank MT

Woke up late, that bed was just so comfortable!! Went on a quick hunt for trains down to Paradise but all was quiet, so hit the road north. A fair bit of snow was still on the trees, but only in places. In some places it looked like no snow at all had fallen, and then just minutes there would be heaps of it. Very odd.

After a while I came to a nice lookout. Unfortunately the places was littered with NO TRESSPASSING signs; I guess they had bought a 10 pack of them or something. Anyway it was a bit over the top, and they'd put the signs right in the middle of the gap in the trees. Clever.

I continued on through Kalispell and so on. I went to find a Walmart to get some stuff, only to find it abandoned with no suggestion on where to find the new one. Surprisingly often I'll come across a relocated Walmart; it's quite frustrating.

Soon I was approacing Glacier National Park and the Marias Pass route, which will be familiar to anyone that plays Microsoft Train Simulator. I drove along not seeing any trains, then rounded a corner and boom, there was a westbounder coming right at me. Quick U turn and back to my photo spots.

He was moving pretty quick so I didn't get much of a chance with one of my favourite photo spots from last year.

I arrived at Essex and boy was it deserted. There were a couple of plows, a spreader, but no bankers, no flangers, no snow train on standby, couldn't even see the big yellow snow fighting machines they had last year.

Last year when I visited the place was just crawling with trains, snow gear, people, etc. They even had the Loram rail grinder in last year, it was a hive of activity.

The big building there is the Izaak Walton Inn, which charges $160+ a night for a room, up to around $400 a night to stay in an old F45 loco.

Pretty cool, but well out of my price range. That said, the place was crawling with expensive looking people carrying around skis, so I guess they aren't starving for business.

While I was watching an east bound auto racker came through.

I jumped on the road and followed him over the pass. I caught him coming out of the snow sheds.

Up the road at Summit I went to shoot him coming under the signals but he was made to wait for two west bounders.

 

30 mins after arriving he took off.

For some reason that I still don't understand, he took off without his headlights on, then sat on the horn the whole time he passed me, and then leaned out the window and shouted something at me with an angry look on his face. Of course after deafening me with his horn I couldn't hear a word he said, all I caught was "blah blah blah!!!". Go figure.

This year the road works had left from "that bridge" and so I was able to easily park and grab "that barn shot" that everyone does. I was lucky in that I got a wee bit of sun and some lovely clouds.

I stopped up the road at the underpass where last year a train got wedged solid in a snow drift, closing down the line for several days. Soon enough the autoracker came round the corner and the moment he saw me he sat on the horn again. I guess he was having a really bad day, or just really did not like railfans. I was lucky in a sense that his loco had a (relatively) anemic horn that was swallowed up by the vast openess here, but it's still a bit uncalled for I think.

I continued on and eventually rolled into Cut Bank, MT. Found a motel with a disney theme; I had the Pluto room. Was nice enough but the guy next to me watched TV till 2am and his dogs kept on wagging their tails against the wall so tap tap tap tap tap. Had a pretty plain meal but managed to finish it this time!