MRL Bozeman Pass Project Official Thread

Hi Everyone,
@boc61: Thanks man! I hope to release this route someday, but when is another matter haha.
@Enzo1: Thanks Chris!
@modeltrains: Thanks Dan!
@rrfoose: Thanks! I will more than likely be using TS12 to build the route in it's entirety, I don't plan to do anything with TANE for the time being, mainly because of frame rate issues and other things that keep me from getting immersed in TANE. Although it likely won't see the light of TANE for me it may for someone else in the future.
@Greg_Hargreaves: Thanks Greg! Nice to see that others for the area can enjoy this route in the way I do. I am born and raised just outside of Bozeman at Muir (East End), which there are many shots of in this thread. I am an avid railfan of the MRL as well which sort of gave me a reason, upon many of course, to make this route.

Over about a period of two or so weeks I have been working on the Bozeman Area and this is what I have come up with so far. I don't plan on doing many more updates to this area for the sake of frame rates (I think they are as low as I would like them to get in this area). The frame rates are more than likely to be low here anyhow since this is the largest town on the route and has a lot of detail, and since there will be meets here I am lucky to get 10-15 fps here with 2 or so trains.

A Glamour shot of the two MRL SD70ACes made by Jointedrail, great work on these Matt and Adam!

A BNSF Oil Can screams down the west side of the pass into Bozeman. The booming K5LLA of the first ACe roars about the valley as it is about to cross Kelly Canyon Road.

That Oil Can meets with the MRL Missoula-Laurel at the east end of Bozeman Siding showing off it's leader's booming K5LLA at another crossing.


The MRL M-L is on the move about to cross Kelly Canyon Road, some railfans watch on as it sounds it's K5LLA.

The MRL M-L passes a track crew as the crew gives a roll by inspection of the train. The crew gives a horn show as they pass.

Heading out of the valley and into the mountains at Mount Ellis:

Screaming with the throttle in the corner just outside of Trail Creek

Heading past many farms at West End


~Coleton

Some more shots from Bozeman Pass, been making some progress on the eastern side of the pass, and there will surely be more to come!
Today we follow a long BNSF LAU-SPO with 4 SD45s and 1 SD40-2 on lead.

love it. well done

Very nicely done it here. mountain railroading is my favorite

Another fantastic round of shots. Very nice.

Great shots, and great work "montana" .

// Erik from Sweden

Nice route looks real.

Thanks for all of the comments everyone!

Sad to see that some of the shots in this thread have disappeared but it isnt too big of a deal.

Been tooling away on the route and making progress as I go. So far I have done most of the scenery for the pass portion of the route, which is nice to have. Ive started work on Livingston which I would like to finish before I start on Bozeman. I have a lot of custom structures to make for Livingston and problably a few to "commission" that are far beyond my skills. Enjoying the building of the route so far, to be honest it has made it much further in terms of scenery than I thought I ever would which is nice. Problably next up is the R-Y Timber Branch which used to be part of the NP's line to Yellowstone National Park, which followed the beautiful Paradise Valley. Still a lot to do on the "to-do" list but that is fine by me.

Some scenery shots to the west of Livingston, MT.

Enjoy! :wave:

Great work!
And great shots... even with no trains!

Yeah, that's pretty cool I guess.

Trying to revive this thread maybe. Been doing some scenery work in Bear Canyon and on the west side of the pass, mostly just trying things out, I'm pretty happy with the way it's been coming together.

Love that last shot

:wave: Great Shots there sir, and a Route to be proud of.

I'm not familiar with this Route, but I'll be coming back to see more of what you post.

Thank you for sharing with us.

Looks real good. Nice work.