Catching Up On The Travel Blog 2020 - Minnesota to Boise, Day 3 - Billings to Bozeman

 

 After our brief visit to Hysham we drove another 75 miles into Billings where we stayed downtown at the Doubletree, a first class hotel.  I mention that because on a previous trip we had stayed on the other side of the tracks on the outskirts of Billings at a unique facility called the Vegas Motel (and casino!)  We were not going to stay there again.

Although it was only the 19th of September, we awoke to a view of snow on the roofs of nearby buildings.   That's the small Phillips 66 refinery in the background. (The Vegas Motel is just beyond.)

Our next stop was Livingston, once a prominent stop on the Northern Pacific railroad line between Minneapolis and the Pacific Northwest.  The depot there has been turned into a railroad museum with a good deal of both Northern Pacific and Great Northern memorabilia.  This stop is well worth your time if you have any interest in railroad history.

 

 

 

The museum features a diorama of the railroad facilities at Livingston.  Behind the diorama, there is a large mural that once hung as backdrop on a Great Northern club car.  Painted by Nick Eggenhoffer, an author and illustrator of pulp fiction, it makes a good companion to Louis L'Amour's work that we saw earlier on this trip.  

 

Another work that I found interesting was this illustration of the inner workings of a railroad postal car.  This is from the New York Central and must have run as a magazine ad in about 1943 or '44.  Note the worker using a magnifier to make out the address on a piece of V-Mail.  V-Mail was a World War II product that reduced overseas armed forces' letters to film and then reprinted them upon arrival in the U.S.

The dining car exhibit from the Northern Pacific will bring back memories to anyone who traveled these lines before they were "Amtracked" out of existence.  A slightly older friend of mine at Pioneer Power worked his way through college as a summertime cook on the NP between St. Paul and Yellowstone.

 

 

The train routes through the Rocky Mountains called for heavy equipment and the locomotive companies responded with some massive engines like this 122 foot long NP "Challenger" with twelve driving wheels.   A history of the Challenger reports that all of the Northern Pacific engines were scrapped and none remain.  There is a surviving Union Pacific Challenger reported to be on display in North Platte, Nebraska.