Main line severed, but these got through Nine minutes after sunset at 9:27 p.m. on July 8, 2023, a trio of Boeing 737 fuselages mounted on flat cars and pulled by a lone Montana Rail Link EMD SD70ACe, curves along the Missouri River through Lombard Canyon east of Toston, Montana. On June 24, 2023, MRL’s bridge crossing the Yellowstone River near Reed Point collapsed as the railroad’s Laurel to Missoula freight traversed it, sending ten cars into the water and closing the MRL main line to through traffic.
BNSF rerouted all of its overhead tonnage to different routes, but had trouble using its own trackage to reroute the large Boeing fuselages due to clearance issues. BNSF asked Union Pacific to run the Boeing trains, but they refused. Not wanting to upset a good customer that needed these fuselages to keep its 737 assembly line rolling, BNSF and MRL came up with a creative solution. With assistance from the Montana Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration, these fuselages bound for Washington state went west by rail on BNSF and MRL to Craver, Montana, were offloaded and trucked on Interstate 90 around the collapsed bridge between Craver and Reed Point, then reloaded on empty Boeing flats. These cars were then quickly expedited westbound on MRL’s main line, with this photo showing the first group of these Boeing fuselages to utilize this very unique movement.
A continuously growing album of photos that IMHO reveal the awesome and seldom-seen beauty of the railroad world from the dimming of day to dawn's early light! From dusk to dawn, trains roll on! (I'm still finding gems of sunset-to-sunrise surprises!)
