I doubt the MRL would want the line over Homestake for the same reason BNSF isn't going to open it. But there is little reason not to give the Garrison-Butte segment to MRL because little would siphoned away by the UP due the circuity of the route (for example, backhauling traffic for Chicago from Billings to Silver Bow and giving to the UP would not be cost effective).

BNSF's monopoly "against Montana farmers" is a myth. Yes, it's the only Class I in the state (except for the few places served by UP), but with regard to moving farm products, most locations always had only one carrier, or were near only one carrier. This monopoly was simply a trumped up charge created by BN merger opponents. In other words, after March 2, 1970 it wasn't like farmers in Glendive on the ex-NP discovered that it made no longer made economic sense to truck their grain to the GN railhead at Wolf Point, because that never happened. Most grain (the primary commodity when the "monopoly" is mentioned) was shipped from the elevator closest to the farm. There wasn't a lot of on-farm storage back then compared to now.

When the Milwaukee Road was about to bow out 10 years later, the argument then morphed into that the Milwaukee was needed to provide competition to the BN "monopoly," but that, too was a fabrication. The Milwaukee exclusively served elevators consisting of only about 7 percent of Montana grain storage capacity, and handled much less. As more and more Montana grain began being shipped to the west coast, notably to the Portland/Vancouver area as well as other Columbia River ports, the circuity of the Milwaukee's routes serving the primary grain producing areas of Montana became more pronounced. Couple this with the Milwaukee's horrible profile (grain from Great Falls to Portland via a Milwaukee Road routing would encounter a steeper grade between Great Falls and Lewistown than the entire route on BN), and the Milwaukee could have provided no real competition for most of Montana's farm products, especially considering today's 16,000-ton shuttle grain trains. Today, of the 21 shuttle grain train facilities in the state of Montana, only 3 are on a former NP route; 1 is on former Milwaukee trackage (at Moore, accessed by ex-GN trackage), and the rest - 17 or 81 percent - are on ex-GN trackage. Only the site at Billings could be reasonably described as accessible by more than one carrier, even in 1970.

Bruce is right: Unless a major coal export facility is constructed somewhere on the west coast, you'll not see any major effort to upgrade capacity on the route from Southeast Montana. If it is, the route that will upgraded will be through Great Falls to Shelby and then west where these heavy trains can operate without a helper. Helper operations restrict the number of trains that can be operated. more so with very heavy trains such as grain and coal. Mullan Pass - and Pipestone for that matter - are too curvy to add a second main track without either increasing the grade or basically adding a completely new right-of-way separate from the existing route.