(The following editorial appeared on the Great Falls Tribune website on August 6.)
GREAT FALLS, Mont. — Funny how unsightly things fade from view over time.
For example, newcomers to the Electric City often are taken aback at the profusion of power lines around the city’s otherwise attractive riverfront, but as time passes the lines seem to fade into the otherwise beautiful scenery.
The same, apparently, can be said for the hundreds of bright yellow rail cars that BNSF Railway Co. has parked between Helena and Great Falls, many of them on the banks of the blue ribbon trout-fishing stretch of the Missouri River.
When Tribune reporter John S. Adams talked to a selection of anglers on the river last week, most were indifferent about the line of rail cars.
“They don’t bother me,” said Ken Nordeste of Sacramento, Calif. “I come here to fish, and it’s not hurting the fishing.”
Some old hands in the area continue to complain about the conversion of the streamside rail line — inactive for several years because of a breach in the line near Ulm — to a single-file railroad parking lot.
And we hear regular critical comments from motorists traveling between Great Falls and Helena. The first time you see the cars, it is kind of shocking.
Because the line is out of use, it’s a good place to park rail cars idled by the national economic downturn. BNSF says it has about 1,500 of them, mostly the kind that carry shipping containers, are parked in the state, and most of them apparently are between Craig and Great Falls.
Company spokesman Gus Melonas said some of the 500 in the Great Falls area were moved recently, but many remain.
The rail line is owned by BNSF, and the company apparently has the right to do what it wants with its property, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the access of adjacent property owners, roads and recreationists.
Even Gov. Schweitzer, who has been critical of the railroad on many issues, had to acknowledge after a meeting with the BNSF CEO that little could be done.
“They own the rail,” he said. “They have the right to do this. I don’t have any legal recourse to tell them that they can’t park their cars on their railroads.”
To its credit, the company has been cooperative when presence of the cars is seen to interfere with surroundings.
“We’ve tried to meet public concerns in the area,” Melonas said. “We have broken cars up so they will not block views significantly. We’ve split cars to not block access for sportsman and fisherman, and we’ve cut cars to allow for animal accessibility to the waterway and other areas.”
So, like a farmer waiting for rain, critics of the parked rail cars have to pin their hopes on an improved economy to get the cars moving again.
Until then, the cars are becoming part of the scenery — a 50-mile-long, bright yellow, graffiti-laced part of the scenery.