A short working career at
Forsyth, Montana 1979
NEW: 6-17-24

 BN index
Big RR's

In Spring, 1979,my wife and I were considered moving to Montana. The coal boom was just beginning and BN was so desperate for experienced train crews that I interviewed by phone with the trainmaster at Forsyth on a Friday, and marked up on the brakeman extra board after taking the book of rules the following Monday afternoon. The jobs mostly consisted of coal mine runs, a few merchandise trains to and from Laurel and two Amtrak trains. The short of it is that we elected to stay in California, so my career with BN was extremly short. I did manage a few photos, however. - EO
Coal train making crew change at Forsythe yard office and depot at sunrise

Same location about 3/4 century earlier:
No. 157 in the hole at Custer, MT for an extended stay: Other than a multitude of coal trains, the only merchandise trains through Forsythe were a pair of hot piggyback trains, nos. 85-86 and maid-of-all-work train nos. 156-157. The trailing F-Unit had been reported as not loading shortly after the train left Minneapolis, but the sharp old head engineer diagnose the problem as a blown generator fuse, and lacking any spare, he used the starter fuse. The old EMD then sprang to life with a huge plume of black smoke. Later, after we put the train away at Laurel Yard, we took the power to the roundhouse, where then engineer gave me a tour.

Only nos. 156-157 seemed to draw first generation power. Here is one, or the other, somewhere between Forsyth and Huntley. Freight train numbers were shown in the employee timetable as "for information only", since all freights ran as extras. For the first few days I was not privy to this because there were no ETT's to be had in Forsyth. I finally located a stack of them at the Billings yard office after making a setout.
Coal trains were identified by the originating mine. I'm about half sure that the train we see here is a D-26 flood-loading loading at Decker Mine at the end of the like-named branch. The two other coal branches existed at the time - Sarpy and Colstrip - and all three were originally built to provide coal for Northern Pacifc's steam locomotives, if memory serves correct. In the years following my short episode there, the coal branch network expanded considerably.

Senator Mike Mansfield's train: Here, the North Coast Limited #17 is departing Forsythe on one of the few sunny days that I experienced. Forsythe's small yard, served by the Clendive Local whose crew overnighted here sits behind the tree. The right-most part of it is the former roundhouse area.

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