Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Train Wreck in the Yellowstone River

Dave, you are almost 100% wrong! There has only been one railroad bridge and it is the one that collapsed this morning! The old highway bridge used to be right next to it until th put in a new I-90 highway bridge downriver.
The old highway bridge was closed and left as is until a few years ago when it was decided to tear it own due to being unsafe and deteriorating . It was a private bridge until then. The two bridges together was called Twin Bridges and that stuck.
The last year or two all of that area was reclaimed and now is part of a now being turned into FWP fishing access. I could never understand why they kept using that railroad bridge that was built around the same time a the old highway bridge.
Just thought you could use some help.

Tarkio, I didn't really plan on selling my house----& you know where I live!!

As of June 24th.

Yellowstone River near Livingston, 11,300 cfs.

At Billings, 22,800 cfs

At Forsyth, 40,100 cfs

Sure gains a lot of flow as you go downstream.


https://snoflo.org/river-levels/yellowstone-river

I went to watch the grandson play in a basketball tournament yesterday in Billings, and I drove past the collapsed bridge. The railroad has assembled a small army of people and equipment at the site. But as high as the river is currently, I have to believe that it is going to be one giant challenge to get that line back in service any time soon. What a wreck…

Our Fearless Transportation Secretary Pete Butt-plug will be on it like a pitbull on a poodle. There will be no pollution to worry about either. It all dissipated, just like the Iowa trainwreck.

I saw several trains yesterday between Billings and Great Falls. It looks like they are routing Billings traffic around the bridge.
From Great Falls I don’t know if trains are going north to the high line or back south to the southern line.
But there is another route.

I wonder what's going on in Washington.........

A few blurbs from an article.

It isn’t clear yet if the derailment caused the bridge to collapse, or the other way around, officials said.

MRL President Joseph Racicot said the train trestle was most recently inspected in May of this year. Ultrasonic testing of the rail line using high-pitched waves to scan rails to identify potential flaws was also done within the last two months, he said.

The bridge collapse forces the closure of a major railroad thoroughfare running across the entire southern length of the state. Until repairs are completed, as much train traffic as possible will be re-routed to the northern line across the Hi-Line, Racicot said. “We’re limited in the amount of rail traffic that can be handled, and it’s going to be a lengthy outage,” he said. “I’m not sure of a timeframe yet. We’ve got to get the stuff cleaned up so we can assess the damage.”

you're not understanding what he is saying. the photos witht he tankers on the brigde with the [bleep] concrete and chains is what he is referring to as creative photogrpahy and I agree with him about the picture of the two bridges side by side showing the RR bridge( one on the left) as having recent piller work. the edges, are sharp, no high water line etc. compared to the highway bridge

Last name might be a clue

Picture of the two bridges side by side? Been a few years since there were two bridges there!. The Only other bridge was the highway bridge that wasn't in use (except by owner) for several more years and it was removed a couple years ago. It was removed due to danger of falling and much work was done reclaiming the area.
Now if there is another picture showing anything else but what is actually there, I have never seen it.

Ask any of the boaters that used the Twin Bridges area for putting in or taking out their boats.

Hopefully you aren't more confused now.

Maybe it is time to imminent domain the rail roads.

Eminent domain? Are you fockking kidding me? For all the hype about wrecks, for all the screaming about "infrastructure," for all the chickens coming home to roost because of the Precision Scheduled Railroading (blank you, Hunter Harrison) fetish Wall Street is stuck on, PRIVATE railroad infrastructure is in pretty good shape overall and still better than it was as recently as 30 years ago. In fact, PUBLIC rail infrastructure as in Amtrak and transit, is worse off than the for-profit RR business. Nowhere near as bad as it was in, say 1980, but some of Amtrak's stuff is pretty ratty, and same for some of the large urban systems.
MRL is physically a good railroad, with good track and equipment. Wrecks are way more expensive than maintaining your stuff, and you make money in railroading by MOVING freight. This bridge thing is simply hydrodynamics at work, the Yellowstone has been running hard for quite a while this year and once flows take the wrong set, bad things happen, and happen shockingly fast. You can bet the next piers will be good for 500 years.

Eh, seems like their f-ups have been on the upswing and service on the downswing for a long time. Typical monopoly, I would say.

I’m not saying I want the government to own or run it (God forbid) but maybe if the track was up for bids/use occasionally they may pick up their game. I bet it could be run a hell of a lot more efficiently than it is.

By the way, kudos on your use of “eminent” vs imminent. I would bet more innovative operators could do it cheaper and provide better service, including expanded passenger service.

Once those trains go northwest from Billings to Great Falls, they have to keep going north all the way to the BNSF East-West mainline on Montana's Hi-Line. That's because the RR line southwest from Great Falls to Helena (and then over the Continental Divide to points further west) has never been reopened after a portion of the tracks next to the Missouri River near Cascade washed out many years ago.

Here's a link to a map of the railroad lines and their ownership in MT: MT Rail System Map

Drove by earlier today.

Do they have the rail cars out of the water yet?

The cars carrying sulphur and asphalt originated at my employer. I can assure you that asphalt is very much petroleum. It's the heavy oil left after refining out the lighter end products.

No, Slope,
MRL is actually a pretty good road, with employees and managers who like their jobs. They are plenty innovative within the constraints of what railroads can and should do. The bridge just passed inspection in May and the piers were rehabbed in the past couple of years. Had they shown any signs of failure then, they would have been fixed then. Probably were, but then the river changed its mind.

As for passenger, forget it, period. The only passenger services that make money now worldwide are "cruise trains," which charge five-star prices for an "experience." Five star meaning a couple grand a DAY. But transportation? I ran the numbers in 2010 or so, before COVID etc etc and it turns out that every seat on the Empire Builder, even filled, cost taxpayers 261 dollars. For every passenger. For that, you can have some schlub with a Geo Metro take Grandma from Podunk to Seattle door to door and have money left over.

The only viable passenger transport I could ever rationally entertain for ordinary, transport traffic point A to B would be daylight runs 10 hours long from fixed "major" towns with a coach or two, passengers overnighting and/or transferring to air travel. That's how I use Amtrak on occasion, sort of. If I have to go to the big world, I'll buy a ticket to Portland, take the trolley from the depot straight to the gates at PDX, and fly from there. Way cheaper, and a nice train ride in the Gorge is a bonus. IF the dang train is ON TIME. Twice in a row, it was not, which caused chaos for me. No, not Spokane, because the streamliner gets THERE at 3 in the focking morning and the airport is closed.
And I've taken the Builder from and to Williston, sunup to sundown both directions. It's faster than a drive, especially in winter, but that's only if the train is ON TIME, which it often IS NOT, especially in winter.

Around 11:30 this morning, Saturday, the first train crossed the Yellowstone River since the bridge collapse/derailment of earlier this month.

I suppose they will be running balls to the walls until they get caught up and the derailment on the Hi Line is repaired!!!