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D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • FA L L 2 0 2 5
Viewers of the model are privileged to enjoy bird's-eye views
of scenes of Montana industry, with trains from Chicago, Mil-
waukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (Milwaukee Road), Great
Northern Railway, Northern Pacific Railway, and Union Pacific
Railroad—all the usual suspects. The trains pass through bucolic
scenes, mostly from the 1950s and 1960s, of tiny lives playing out,
frozen, on a 1/87 scale. Men and women work at their jobs and
drive to stores, and children attend school. To many who lived
during those days, it will be reminiscent of the Montana of their
youth, here miraculously preserved in a lilliputian and sweetly
nostalgic monument to a vanished world. You might just want
to shrink yourself down and join the tiny figures who live there.
Time moves a little differently in the world of the model. Change
doesn't come so fast. In fact, it's mostly frozen, except for the
trains making their silent, miniature circuit through Montana's
towns. They don't just move through space, but through time,
too. Present are iconic railroad buildings of Montana's past
no longer standing in our own imperfect world, like the Great
Northern Train Depot in Helena.
The world captured so lovingly and with such craftsmanship by
the folks who have devoted their time and money to the Western
Montana Railroad Historical Association is a lot like ours, if a
little smaller, and a little simpler.
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