49
w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m
perhaps because Portland was much
closer than Ohio, they decided to buy
from Willamette. In 1923, No. 7 was
built in Portland and headed east to
a logging camp near Arlee. In 1930,
after the Arlee logging project had
come to an end, engine No. 7 was re-
located to the Blackfeet River Valley,
east of Missoula. By then, it and the
other assets of the Western Lumber
Company had been acquired by the
Anaconda Company. The locomotive
would spend the next 20 or so years
moving logs down the valley to the
mill at Bonner. In the late 1950s, as
trucks began to replace steam loco-
motives at logging camps, locomotive
No. 7 was placed in storage at the mill
in Bonner, just in case the new equip-
ment broke down.
In 1954, Hollywood came calling when
Republic Pictures went to Montana to
film the Western Timberjack, starring
Sterling Hayden, Vara Ralston, Da-
vid Brian, and locomotive No. 7. The
movie, based on a book written by a
University of Montana graduate, was
about a rivalry between two logging
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