The Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway is a

shortline railroad A shortline railroad is a small or mid-sized railroad company that operates over a relatively short distance relative to larger, national railroad networks. The term is used primarily in the United States and Canada. In the former, railroads are ...

in the U.S. state of

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

. Founded in 1891, it was the main conduit for ore transport between

Butte In geomorphology, a butte ( ) is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller landforms than mesas, plateaus, and table (landform), tablelands. The word ''butte'' comes from the French l ...

and

Anaconda Anacondas or water boas are a group of large boas of the genus ''Eunectes''. They are a semiaquatic group of snakes found in tropical South America. Three to five extant and one extinct species are currently recognized, including one of the l ...

. The railroad operated as the BA&P until its sale in 1985, when it was renamed the Rarus Railway (RARW). In May 2007, the railroad was sold to the

Patriot Rail Corporation Patriot Rail Company LLC (Patriot Rail) is a holding company for a number of short-line railroad, shortline railroads across the United States. In June 2012, Patriot Rail was acquired by SteelRiver Infrastructure Partners (SteelRiver). On August ...

and in July of that year its original name restored. The BA&P was used for filming of portions of the 1985 movie ''

Runaway Train A runaway train is a type of railroad incident in which unattended rolling stock is accidentally allowed to roll onto the main line, a moving train loses enough braking power to be unable to stop in safety, or a train operates at unsafe speeds d ...

''.

Founding

In 1890, a dispute between the Montana Union Railway and the Anaconda Copper Company arose over the cost to transport copper ore from the

mines to the

, Montana,

smelter Smelting is a process of applying heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product. It is a form of extractive metallurgy that is used to obtain many metals such as iron, copper, silver, tin, lead and zin ...

Marcus Daly Marcus Daly (December 5, – November 12, 1900) was an Irish-born American businessman known as one of the four Copper Kings of Butte, Montana, United States. Early life Daly emigrated from County Cavan, Ireland, to the United States as a youn ...

, the interest behind the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, financed the incorporation of the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific in 1891, and operation began just two years later, in 1893. While transport of ore from Butte to Anaconda was central to the line's founding, the BA&P was chartered as a

common carrier A common carrier in common law countries (corresponding to a public carrier in some civil law (legal system), civil law systems,Encyclopædia Britannica CD 2000 "Civil-law public carrier" from "carriage of goods" usually called simply a ''carrier ...

and carried passengers and general freight.

Early years

When it first opened, the BA&P used steam locomotives to haul the ore, freight, and passenger trains, however the heavy daily use took its toll on the engines, and by 1910 alternative power sources were being sought. The BA&P was an

electrification Electrification is the process of powering by electricity and, in many contexts, the introduction of such power by changing over from an earlier power source. In the context of history of technology and economic development, electrification refe ...

pioneer, electrifying out of between 1912 and 1913. The work was performed by

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

and the railroad's own staff. Power was delivered from Great Falls, to the northeast, and converted from AC to DC via several substations along the railway. While the common voltages used were 600 or 1200 volts DC, BA&P electrification was the highest available at that time, being 2,400 volts DC. A cotemporaneous article described the work: Seventeen new electric locomotives were ordered from General Electric, with two being passenger locomotives and fifteen being freight locomotives. The two passenger locomotives were outfitted with double

pantograph A pantograph (, from their original use for copying writing) is a Linkage (mechanical), mechanical linkage connected in a manner based on parallelograms so that the movement of one pen, in tracing an image, produces identical movements in a se ...

s, dual headlights, and were geared for a standard running speed of while pulling three coaches. In contrast, the freight locomotives had single headlights and one pantograph each, and were geared for a standard speed of . In 1914 four more locomotives were ordered from General Electric; these were geared lower than the other freight units and intended to be used at slow speeds in the smelter and Butte mine yards. The 1913 GE locomotives were marked as numbers 50–66, the 1914 units 46–49, the 1916 units 42–45. During the era of electrification, passenger service typically consisted of four daily roundtrips between Butte and Anaconda (typically with locomotive #65 or #66 pulling two passenger cars and a baggage car). By contrast, a freight run regularly extended to sixty cars each carrying of ore, for a total mass of . Such trains would be divided in the West Anaconda yard for multiple lower-geared locomotives to take to the smelter for unloading.

De-electrification

The electrification was abandoned in 1967 as it had become cheaper to operate

diesel-electric locomotive A diesel locomotive is a type of railway locomotive in which the power source is a diesel engine. Several types of diesel locomotives have been developed, differing mainly in the means by which mechanical power is conveyed to the driving whee ...

Sale

The railroad lost much of its business following the closure of the Anaconda smelter, and was sold to a consortium of local investors and reconstituted as the Rarus Railway in 1985. On July 19, 2007,

, the parent company which had acquired Rarus Railway in May 2007, officially changed the railways name back to Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway.

Preservation

Many resources of the railway were included in the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway Historic District, which was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1988.

Film credit

In 1985, The BA&P became the backdrop of full-length feature film ''

''. The film, directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, starred

Jon Voight Jonathan Vincent Voight (; born December 29, 1938) is an American actor. Throughout his career, he has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and four Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations ...

, who was nominated for an Academy Award & won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, Eric Roberts, who was nominated for an Academy Award & Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor, Rebecca DeMornay, John P. Ryan, Kyle T. Heffner, Kenneth McMillan & Edward Bunker who also co-wrote the script. It was filmed on BA&P tack and at the Anaconda roundhouse in March 1985. The film was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture - Drama.

Footnotes

References

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External links

Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railway Web site
Montana railroads Former Class I railroads in the United States Electric railways in Montana Patriot Rail Company Anaconda Copper {{Montana-transport-stub