What would you expect of the northern most train route in Montana? After rounding the lower tip of Glacier National Park, the crisp pristine looking alpine environment slowly melted away into scrub. The most interesting thing to see as the sun passed below the horizon was an example of early railroad engineering pragmatism.
Going down river, the train had to rise up hundreds of feet to emerge on the high trans-border plateau spanning the breadth of a wide state. A decision had to be made as the line approached a rounded but deep tributary cutting to our left (north) leaving a drop down to river bottom in front. Freeway designers would have built a span bridge crossing the gap and rising several hundred feet straight ahead. This was too expensive for our continent span railroads that had to cross many such natural barriers. Anyway, it would likely be too steep for a train.
The solution: Turn 90 degrees north following the dry valley for miles, rising all the time, until reaching a spot low enough to build an earthen bridge that served double duty as a flood control dam. Turning 180 to the south the train rose more steeply so that only a brief tunnel passage was required to ascend to the rim. At the head of the valley, the turn was so severe that the slowly creeping train almost looped back on itself being on both side walls at the same time.
After that, Montana was a snore, figuratively and literally. Don’t get me wrong if you are from the high plains of Montana. The land is obviously productive with lower growing produce than Iowa and more terrain variety than Kansas without the frequent tornadoes. Hopefully there is some other form of entertainment. Watching the baby tornadoes and waterspouts flit across the fields was the best thing to watch during my visit with an aunt in Waverly Kansas. So I slept after a picturesque crossing of a small town straddling a river junction. Utterly flat terrain is conducive to sleep.
