Thanks Bruce for all of the positive feedback about my blog! I started to search for some good spots on the old GN Butte Line, but I am not having much luck, I do not know that line too well.
I just remember being able to see a lot of evidence of the line while trying not to get killed while driving south on I-15 from Helena to Butte. There are curves posted at 35mph on that highway! This line was eliminated by BN right after the merger. I have seen video of FAs coming into Butte in the Fifties. If anyone out there in AP land would like to help post some Google map embeds, I would really appreciate it. If you run across a good map section, I can assist with the embedding, it is fairly simple.

Regarding the CRI&P Choctaw Route, it is something like torture to drive all that way on I-40 and just see the dead right of way. As my friend Colin Johnson says, this is a line that would have been mega-important in today's transcon market if it only had held on about another decade, being the shortest route between LA and Memphis. Perhaps the KCS would have snapped it up, ah.. the legacy of the UP/Rock Island merger debacle of the 1960s, which wound up being a death struggle between the UP and the SP.