March 25, 2017
The annals of Milwaukee Road history
are voluminous, even hyperbolic on its rise, heyday and eventual
demise, and even today, a hundred-years-on, the mystique of The
Milwaukee still lives. Just outside of Lind, Washington one can still
“see” standing, like a stoic wraith, the iconic concrete
abutments of the 833’ deckless span, and there, pay homage to the
great, gone-but-not-forgotten, latent westward comer. By the 80’s,
its vicissitudes too many and too heavy to carry, the Road, in a
desperate fit of self-preservation, amputated its atrophying Pacific
limb to no avail eventually and quite imminently dying a mutilated
and agonizing septuagenarian death. On this homage with my son
Alexander, two BNSF trains meet “under” what is left a bridge too
far: one of many along the once proud Route of the Hiawatha and
Olympian.
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