By Justin Franz

Twenty-eight days after its bridge over the Yellowstone River collapsed, disrupting rail traffic to and from the Pacific Northwest, Montana Rail Link has rebuilt its bridge near Reed Point, Mont. The first train over the new bridge was on Saturday morning. 

On June 24, MRL’s Laurel to Missoula road freight derailed crossing the Yellowstone River, sending about 10 cars into the water below and spilling molten sulfur and asphalt. Since then the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been spearheading the cleanup of the river while MRL and BNSF Railway focused on rebuilding the bridge. 

The “new” bridge near Reed Point uses part of the original thru truss span, plus a pair of spans from an old Milwaukee Road bridge from the western part of the state. 

With MRL’s main line open again, rail traffic in the state can go back to its normal patterns. For the last four weeks, BNSF has been detouring much of its traffic over its Laurel and Great Falls subdivisions to Shelby to meet up with the Hi-Line Subdivision. In order to handle the additional traffic through Great Falls, BNSF and MRL struck a deal with its unions to send MRL crews to the former Great Northern line. A few days ago, those crews were called back to MRL.