I was recently out of town on a scouting trip to find hunting and fishing locations in eastern Montana. While I was out on the eastern side, I decided to take a couple hours one day and detour to the extreme western edge of the Soo Line at Whitetail, MT. Other photos exist of this line, but I haven't seen any taken during the last few years so I was interested in seeing what the track conditions were like. While the line is not abandoned, there is very little, if any, traffic west of the MT/ND border. Even so, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the track was in decent shape. The following photos were taken around Whitetail and a few miles East of that point.
First photo is the end of the line at milepost 674. Amazing to think that a person could start from here and travel rather directly to Minneapolis or go on to the other end of the system at Sault Ste Marie. I should mention that these rails haven't been changed out since 1915, or at least that's the date printed on the side. So this track has been sitting in a rather lonely part of the country for 105 years. There is some grading that goes a few hundred yards further west, but the tracks pretty much stop in this mound of dirt and weeds.
Looking East back toward Whitetail. To the left of the photo there is a wye buried in the grass. I should note that all photographs were taken on access points to public hunting land or from public roadways, so there was no issues with physically being on the tracks. Of course, if the line had regular traffic I'd be more hesitant to stop and take pictures where a train might hit me.
The three photos above show the larger of the two grain elevators in Whitetail. The middle photo above also shows the backside of the high school building.
Here's the smaller of the two elevators. Both share a single spur and I think they have the same owners. While both are capable of having rail service, there has been no traffic on the line for the last several years.
I'm not certain what the purpose of the little brown structure is, but I recognize the design as being Soo Line.
This structure is much easier to identify, it appears to be the town depot. This building sits on someone's backyard and the owner has put a steel roof on it. The exterior is faded, but looks to be structurally sound so this one should be around for a while longer.
In much worse shape is what I believe to be the high school that closed decades ago.
There's a fair bit of open country running to the next town on the line. West to East, the other towns include:
- Outlook
- Raymond
- Dooley
- Comertown
- Westby
At that point the line enters North Dakota and runs east to Flaxton, ND where it meets the CP Rail mainline. The tracks are owned by the Dakota, Missouri Valley, and Western and this isolated portion of line is about 150 miles from the rest of the DMVW system in SE and central North Dakota. The other towns along this line have had a lot more documentation on the Internet so I wanted to have the last town on the Soo Line documented and available on the internet in some form or fashion.
I doubt this line will ever see much traffic since much of it's route runs parallel to a BNSF line a few miles to the south and there are elevators with rail service at Plentywood. I believe the North Dakota side of the branch line has traffic more regularly. After about 20 miles I had to drop south since I was getting low on both fuel and daylight. Perhaps one day I'll return to the area, but I'm not counting on it.
It's been a long time since I was last standing near Soo Line tracks so being there actually made me a bit homesick and nostalgic. I remember those red and white locomotives working for the Canadian Pacific in Minnesota in the 90's. The last time I saw a Soo Line engine working was in 2013 in South Dakota just before the DME trackage was sold off to Genessee and Wyoming.
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James Willmus
Website: Homestakemodels.com (website currently having issues)
