A short four-car Rarus Railway freight heads eastbound to the giant copper mine at Butte trundling along Silver Bow Creek between Silver Bow and Rocker, Montana, on September 25, 2006. This trackage has had a long, varied history that began as an electrified ore hauler named the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railway, founded by Anaconda Copper Mining Company in 1893. 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—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.
