A short Rarus Railway freight works uphill and crosses Continental Drive heads for the giant copper mine at Butte, Montana, on September 25, 2006. This short line has had a long, varied history that began as an electrified ore hauler named the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway in 1893 founded by Anaconda Copper Mining Company. By 1967, the railroad dieselized and in 1969, tore down the electrification. By the early 1980s when Anaconda Mining closed its smelter, the traffic base quickly fell off making survival of the railroad in question. The railroad became the Rarus Railway in 1990 and went through a few other short-term iterations with names like Montana Western and Central Montana before being acquired by Patriot Rail in 2007 and changing its name back to—you guessed it—Butte, Anaconda and Pacific! Lead locomotive EMD GP9 No. 105 is still in its original paint scheme it received when built for BA&P in 1957.
Not
just heritage schemes, not just commemorative schemes - this album is devoted to some of the world's most interesting paint schemes, past or present.
