Undeterred, in 1894 Harlow organized the Montana Railroad, a project with similar goals. Construction work on the Montana Railroad began in 1895 at Lombard, a station on the Northern Pacific Railway 53 miles east of Helena. The Montana Railroad route proceeded eastward from Lombard up Sixteen Mile Canyon towards the mining districts of the Castle Mountains, in southeastern Meagher County. The railroad reached Leadborough, at the southern end of the mining district, in November 1896; unfortunately for the railroad, however, the region's mines were already past their peak by then.