Train Hopping Across Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California, and Oregon

by Aaron Dactyl

  You hear all sorts of things about people getting busted riding trains, ranging from simply being kicked off to thousand-dollar fines and a mandatory seven days in jail. I’ve even heard of a kid getting 180-days straight. But that was on BNSF and who knows how many warrants and priors he had. I myself have only ever been thrown off a train, but never formally charged. In Whisky’s situation, I think he got real lucky. Lucky the Sheriff busted him and not the Bull, lucky that They didn’t arrest and actually take him in, lucky that the charges were not overstated, that the case was put on early dismissal, and very lucky that the fine only amounted to as much as a good night of drinking.

  Derived from the native nemissoolatakoo, meaning “cold waters,” Missoula sits at the southwestern shore of an ancient glacial finger-lake dating back to the last ice age, 10,000-15,000 years ago. The two-hundred-foot-deep lake was as big as Lake Ontario and Lake Erie combined, and during the Great Thaw broke through its ice damn in the Coeur d’Alene mountains of Idaho and flooded the Eastern Washington landscape with sixty-five-mile-per-hour torrents of water equal to ten times all the rivers in the world, creating the Scablands and gouging a great gorge through the Cascade Mountains for the Columbia River. Glacial Lake Missoula, as it is now known, slowly refilled over the millennia and repeat the process, and this reoccurred hundreds of times over thousands of years as if routine. Much geologic evidence tracing to Montana and Idaho, as well as the eastern portions of Washington and Oregon, has been found scattered hundreds of miles away, across the Cascade Mountains, where the Gorge funneled enough sediment to fill the Willamette Valley 80-feet rich with soil. Striations representing the lake’s varying water-levels are today still visible in Missoula on Mt. Jumbo (named such because it abstractly resembles a giant elephant) and adjacent Mt. Sentinel with its giant “M” claiming the horizon east.

  Signs of railroad culture are abound throughout the town of Missoula in the form of train-related signs and murals, yet today few tramps are about. I meet Amber playing her guitar on the sidewalk, case open for spare change, bags strewn beside her and used as seat. Both her and her partner Earl ride trains she tells me, but neither has hopped out of Missoula yet. They plan to however and she tells me they’ve seen by the McDonalds down the street trains roll slow enough to catch on the fly.

  Up Higgins Avenue from where Amber sits I find the train station, where four giant red Xs stand as sculpture out front and an old black steam-engine is parked behind a steel-barred fence, behind which a couple of Montana Rail Link units idle near a refueling pad and an old passenger-train sits silently on its own exempt track. I follow the tracks west to a footbridge crossing a line of empty MRL gondolas and walk beside two long lines of old MRL boxcars, graffiti covered and fenced off from a bike path. Further down, past another bridge, the yard office and several yard shops mark the crew-change point for all eastbound and westbound trains: where the yard really begins.

  I have heard many stories about train hopping in the great state of Montana, with much lore surrounding the town of Missoula in particular. For instance, said-to-be FTRA founding member Daniel Boone is rumored to now be preaching somewhere in the surrounding Bitterroot Mountains, and author Luscious Shepard reported in a 1998 Spin Magazine article that a feud between FTRA tramps camping along nearby Rattlesnake Creek ended with one F-Trooper losing his life, for which a certain Mississippi Bones is now serving out a sentence in a federal penitentiary in Atlanta. And such is the history of this place. But today remains little sign of tramp life—no markings under the bridges, no littered jungles—and the entire yard looks impenetrable except at night. In fact, the only evidence of past tramp culture I find hangs on the walls inside Charlie’s, a downtown bar where hundreds of black and white profiles of tramps and old drunks cover the brick walls, proving that Missoula was at least once a vibrant tramp town.

  •••

  Just two days ago temperatures soared into the hundreds and I found myself outside the small town of Victor hiking a rocky horse-trail miles up into the Bitterroot Mountains along boulderous Bear Creek, the clear stream roiling over smooth granite slopes, funneling through slabs of enormous rock, collecting in deep pools a mossy green. (We ran around stark naked in this wilderness and I could not help feeling a bit like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden). Trekking out under a futuristic Red Giant sunset, an anvilhead, a dark gathering of cumulus, rolled over the mountains east dropping a curtain of rain. Peering fifty, sixty, seventy miles out across the Bitterroot Valley I realized then why this is called Big Sky Country. The front excited dust storms, sent tumbleweeds rolling down the road like a herd of cattle, and swayed trees so sturdy that large branches gave way. As I paused to observe it all, a single bolt of lightning struck the ground half the length of a football field from where I stood, flashing a pink and blue bolt and cracking the air like a great whip, freezing me for the moment. The eventual downpour obscured all relative vision and flooded the road, and as lightening strikes increased in proximity and frequency, somewhere in the mountains southwest of Missoula, the Downing Mountain Fire was born.

  Yesterday, as a result of the storm front, temperatures dropped into the seventies. Not the best day to paddle, but eight people and a large cooler of Cold Smoke, Olympia, and Big Sky beers drifted the Clark Fork River through the Alberton Gorge northwest of Missoula, braving class 2 and 3 rapids, and one Fang Rapid, which was preceded by a great cliff bulging out over the river that several scrambled up and climbed around on. But only I made the jump. Today, the River City Roots Festival has the town out in full force breathing life into the local economy through two farmers markets—one on each end of town—and a crap fair on Main Street. There is a great party in the streets of Missoula, Robert Earle Keene is performing, and it’s free to the masses and open to drinking as long as you have an orange plastic cup showing all the event sponsors’ names. One thing I can say for sure is that Missoulians love their beer.

  1:30 P.M. In the Missoula yard where I am standing the sun is shining warmly through two merging sheets of cumulostratus. Beyond the mountains, between Mt. Jumbo’s “L” and Mt. Sentinel’s “M”, ominous clouds speak of rain, but I am hoping they hold off until I reach Helena. There are three eastbound trains—two empty coal-trains (one just pulled in on the mainline with a DPU) and a uniform line of BNSF grainers with suicide porches—and I stand ready to catch whichever departs first, but I am ultimately aiming to ride a DPU. The yard is active and a worker is roaming the lines on an ATV checking air hoses, so I must keep an eye and ear out for him.

  3:30 P.M. Nothing has departed south since about 10 A.M. I got sick of keeping constant watch for what are now two roaming ATVs so I am sitting inside an empty, and surprisingly clean coal-car. A worker already checked the air hoses on this line and it aired up and lurched forward an hour ago, but hasn’t moved since. The difficulty that the Missoula yard poses begins with it being heavily fenced off on both sides for miles and then bordered by high-traffic areas. There is no jungle to hole up in to wait, and this being Montana Rail Link property, mostly BNSF trains run on these tracks so there is no calling in cars to trace their destinations; one must rely solely on their knowledge of the freight system and the layout of general industry (empty coal-cars are returning to the Powder River Basin in Wyoming while loaded coal-cars are heading west to Spokane, and beyond). And then there’s the workers roaming the yard on ATVs—versatile, quick, relatively quiet, and not easy to anticipate. So far, it’s not been easy getting out of Missoula.

  It took three trains to get from Missoula to Laurel, and over a day and a half’s time, time in which rainbows transpired, storms passed, rain fell and sun shined; rivers were crossed on bridge and spanned by trestle, mountains climbed and descended on steep grades, tunnels traversed west to east, and still half a day was spent in the Stillwater Valley idle along the watershed of the Yellowstone River.

  MRL’s 3rd Subdivision (as it is named), the 112 mile stretch from Missoula
to Helena that follows the Clark Fork River into the Rocky Mountains of Lolo National Forest and crosses the Continental Divide is unusual in that the photographs I took render it much more impressive than it initially appeared. Usually it’s the other way around and I feel I have failed to capture the grandeur of a landscape and the excitement I felt in being there. Perhaps I was expecting too much of the Rocky Mountains, or have seen too much of the Cascades and Mt. Shasta wilderness to be impressed by less dramatic uplifts. Most of what I see is junk. Montana is junky, and the ride from Missoula to Helena will take you through such piles of junk as Clinton, Nimrod, Drummond, and Belgrade, with their trailers and rusted-automobile laden yards and many abandoned mills. On one side of the train I can see how this was once such a majestic land to native eyes and pioneering minds. But the landscape on the other side—the rivers, mountains, and forests—has been manipulated and developed, costing the novelty of the former frontier. An abandoned track grade, with its unearthed rotting ties, parallels the MRL line intermittently, remnants of the old Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific, abandoned decades ago. Empty lumber cars crowd the sidings and spur-tracks wherever space is available, a constant reminder of the economic recession, and at least one large mess of silver coal-cars, a derailment, remains mangled alongside the tracks amongst heaps of spilled coal like some makeshift scrap yard. Yes, the 3rd Subdivision is best slept through, until you get to Blossburg.

  It is here at Blossburg the train crosses the Continental Divide at Mullen Pass, entering into the 3,886-foot-long Mullen Tunnel through the Rocky Mountains, on the other side of which appears a panoramic vista of the train spanning a high curving trestle above skinny lodgepole pines and rural homesteads. The final twenty miles to Helena spirals down the eastern flank of the Montana Rockies nearly 2,000 feet on 2% grades. The conditions surrounding my descent were particularly dramatic: the clouds had been spitting at me for some time and as I emerged from the tunnel the sun broke through and lit the landscape a fiery yellow, projecting the train’s shadow across the hills over which prismatic rainbows arched. Little triangular houses dotted the forest floor and plumes of smoke rose from dense hillsides all around. No more did I see, hear, or even think about the highway: the only noise was the cadence of the train and the flange screeching around each curving degree like a chorus of rusty angels.

  Rolling into Helena at dusk a vivid rainbow arched from the town’s horizon as if welcoming me. I climbed off the porch just after the sunset, too cold to want to continue further as I was. I knew that the train had no DPU, and but instead seven lead units—3 orange BNSFs pulled by 4 blue MRLs—and I was headed to the front of the train to try and board one when it aired up and took off. I did not try to catch back onto another grainer. Instead I walked back through the yard, and I encountered a worker almost instantly. He was standing opposite a coupler and I straightened my posture to explain that I was headed east and had just given up my suicide-porch on the last line. I could tell he did not much care for me being there, but also that he would not rat me out. He said nothing was headed east for a while and for me to be careful because they were switching cars, then walked off.

  My bags stashed up under the overpass in Helena I walked up the street to a commercial strip to look for a place to dine and dash. I found cheap taco places, an array of hotel chains, gas stations, a grocery store, and a plethora of drunken Native Americans coming and going from any of the several small casinos, but no place I could eat free. I goniffed two Clif bars from a gas station and bought a six-pack of Beltian White beer (brewed in Belt Montana) and arrived back at the yard to a line of empty coal-cars on the mainline—the very same train that was on the mainline back in Missoula. Knowing that this train had a DPU, I grabbed my bags and began walking the line back. However, it too aired up and began to move before I could reach the end so I hopped on the half-porch of a Silver Bullet coal car and laid myself down to sleep. Immediately it began to rain, and whatever sinister asshole designed those train cars did so in a way that the slant of the overhang collects all raindrops and funnels water down onto the back of the porch where the hobo sleeps. I could feel rain soaking up through the bottom of my thin sleeping bag, but still I was able to fall into sloom. The train eventually sided in the middle of nowhere next to this cavernous cliff, and there, under the pitch black Big Sky and the faint trickling of a stream, I stumbled back on an uneven slope of rocks with my sleeping bag dripping from my shoulders, climbed aboard the idling DPU, and fell back asleep on the dry, engine floor.

  9:30 A.M. Craver siding, mile marker 48. 34 miles to Laurel yard, the southbound catch-out spot that is twelve miles west of Billings. My train has sat idling here since about 4:30 this morning and the only thing that has passed is a track-inspection truck gliding north on the rails.

  1:30 P.M. The afternoon is clear and sunny and I have been roaming the adjacent land not too far from the train. Clouds fill the valley, teasing with droplets of rain, and a cool breeze is steadily increasing. Since the track-inspection truck passed only two track-repair machines have followed west, and a GM train leading with ginormous airplane parts.

  2:30 P.M. While a lot of people consider this downtime to be the bane of riding trains, I appreciate the nothingness and nowhereness that forces one to observe and reflect. I use the time to strengthen myself mentally, simplify my wants and needs, and tone down my expectations for immediate happiness—just existing, and napping. Most of my friends cannot handle idleness and solitude for more than an hour’s time, but I anticipate this sort of intimacy with myself, and that’s one reason I prefer to ride alone. I pride myself on being able to endure the dead time better than others, keeping my composure about myself and solidifying my endurance and patience. Because really, what more could I want? I am here in the heart of Big Sky Country where I never before have been, as free as I have ever been, and ever will be, doing exactly what I love exactly the way I love to do it—under the radar, unknown and anonymous, alone in my own personal freight-train coach car—and I don’t need anyone to provide a context in which to appreciate it. And while this being stranded can be a little unnerving (I sometimes wonder if the train will ever move again, or if it has been abandoned out here or if a malfunction might send a worker back to inspect the unit, catching me off guard), my being “stranded” is only relative to the bustle of society. (Besides, the highway’s nearby and I’m not afraid to hitchhike, so as not to worry). I’ve always said that half of riding trains is waiting, and this nothingness is nothing unusual, yet essential to the train hopping experience. But the half of riding trains part may be a bit of an understatement.

  Laurel, Montana-

  The train never left Craver siding. I stayed there all day, roaming a nearby field and walking the line up and back, never straying far from the unit until, after thirteen hours, another line of eastbound empties finally came and stopped on the mainline beside my train with two DPUs only a few cars back. I hustled my things back to the other line’s DPU, a newer model stocked with water that was actually cold, and that train departed ahead of the old train. It crept through Columbus and several other sidings as if going to stop, then picked up momentum along the Yellowstone River which remains as nature intended, an unsculpted watershed rich and expansive, wide enough across to account for high water in spring and late winter and low enough in summer for islands to emerge. Like the unhindered wilderness of Yellowstone National Park reaching out across the mountains into Montana, recent animal prints were abound in the mud.

  Laurel, not Billings, is the catch-out spot for southbound trains to Wyoming. A large switchyard sits about a mile east of downtown Laurel; trains depart geographically westbound then either keep heading west on MRL or take a sharp turn south through Laurel. The train I rode in on came to a halt at the throat of the yard and I climbed off the unit directly behind the Chamber of Commerce. After stashing my bags inside some heavy machinery near the brand new Welcome to Laurel caboose, I walked into town to find a
bite to eat. I’m low on foodstamps so I stole half the food, and with the little money I have bought some beer, and I walked out of the store just in time to see a southbound general manifest passing through town too late for me to catch. Oh well, I thought, I’ll just have a bit of time to get to know Laurel and I’ll catch-out in the morning.

  On the train tracks downtown I watched the sunset while eating, reading the Laurel Outlook, and drinking Yellowstone Valley Brewing beer (gotta live local wherever you are). A long, uniform line of maroon BNSF grainers (like the ones I rode out of Missoula on) headed off into the sunset too fast to catch on the fly. The monikers I see repeatedly on these cars are—first and foremost—the Kilroy-inspired Ewok character peering over some invisible ledge. Then there’s Raildog either telling his kids he “rulz” or to go back to school “please!,” and that we will “never forget” [9-11]. There’s also a little clawing cat, Big Ed with a side profile of a Scooby like dog, the ever-present Men of Culture moniker, and a gothic looking bat that seems to be popping up on BNSF stock more and more frequently.