Some photos from today's hunt along the abandoned Milwaukee RR grade, approx. 12 miles from Terry, Montana. There was a **** tonne of aqua H.G.CO. [020] beehives and aqua H.G.CO. [120] 151s. I found a whole bunch of porcelain insulators (including a tonne of U-148 & 149 beehives), five red amber WT 216s, some aqua and hemi-blue Hemingray-21s (145s), some Brookfield 145s, two composite (not plastic) CD 154 shaped insulators and one yellow-green star 133. The bridge in the foreground is where the infamous Olympian Hiawatha express accident happened, on Custer Ck. Here's some text from a nearby plaque/sign: --------------------------------------------------------------- The "Olympian Hiawatha" was considered a "crack train" - one of the finest and fastest - on the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul line. It traveled the now-abandoned railroad grade that is the road by which you arrived here. On the night of June 19, 1938, a freak night-time cloudburst created a flash flood that surged down Custer Creek, collapsing a bridge trestle. The torrent was an estimated 30 feet deep, yet just below the tracks and invisible to the train's engineer. Accounts said the locomotive crossed with the tender and baggage coaches before the bridge blew out. The force and weight of the plunging coaches snapped the locomotive off the track, into the air backward onto the baggage car "...like the tip of a lashing whip." A crushed speedometer recorded the impact speed at 65 miles per hour. Fifety-six passengers - many sleeping - perished immediately or drowned. Another 67 were injured; approximately 190 people were aboard. Resscue crews worked for days to extract casualties and clear the wreckage. The Yellowstone river currents were so extreme that bodies were later recovered near Fallon, Glendive and Sidney - 25, 50 and 108 miles downstream. -------------------------------------------------------------------- And here's a quote that was on the sign: -------------------------------------------------------------------- "The bodies were clad in pajamas and night gowns... mute testimony that the victims had been jolted suddenly into wakefullness only to die a split second later..." - United Press reporter |