Dakota Junction

Dakota Junction Rd crossing the small yard West of Chadron, Nebraska

As discussed earlier, Dakota Junction serves three separate railroads, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, the Nebraska Northwestern, and the Rapid City Pierre and Eastern.

For the Rapid City Pierre and Eastern, Dakota Junction is an interchange with the Nebraska Northwestern and shares trackage with that railroad on the leg of the wye which leads south to Crawford, Nebraska.  Dakota Junction is the southern-most point of the Black Hills Sub-Division for the RCPE and is the last point of full trackage rights.

Dakota Junction has no inhabitants as it is not a town, just a point on the RCPE.  But being an interchange, Dakota Junction is a very vital piece of the line South of Rapid City.

This photo shows the yard tracks from the East end of Dakota Junction.  A half mile or so West of this point is the wye.  While no trains came that morning, it is apparent there has been recent traffic in the area.  There might be a weekly train, or perhaps a train on an as-needed basis from Rapid City to this point.

Looking to the East from the yard we can see a grain loader on the mainline of the Nebraska Northwestern. Train cars here probably head south to Crawford, Nebraska where they are interchanged with the BNSF. The only thought that causes doubt is that the mainlines at Crawford serve only one purpose, coal hauling.  I have not yet seen a grain train on that mainline between Crawford and Edgemont, South Dakota.

This crossing is about 2 miles South of Oelrichs, South Dakota between Dakota Junction and Oelrichs.

Dakota Junction, A Good Starting Point

Dakota Junction is located at the extreme Southwestern end of the Rapid City Pierre and Eastern Railroad.  I'll be doing followup posts on the prototype, but this is looking at the excellent qualities of this area to be modeled.  To start with, it is an interchange yard and a wye for turning trains.  The yard interchanges with the Nebraska, Northwestern Railroad which runs 7.22 miles east into Chadron, Nebraska.  The line headed South goes into Crawford, Nebraska, where the BNSF mainline is at. The RCPE will make runs down into Crawford and head back North to Rapid City, dropping off and picking up cars at the interchange with the NNW.  As for the NNW, the railroad hosts a grain loader in Chadron and has a large yard that is busy repairing cars.  The RCPE may sometimes bring cars down to be repaired, but most of the rail cars seem to be coal gondolas for the BNSF.

But our focus on this post is just on the junction, which we can see via Google Maps:

This small piece of the railroad serves a very vital function, equally important to all three railroads.  For the Rapid City Pierre and Eastern, Dakota Junction is an interchange with the NNW and a continuation to Crawford, Nebraska with it's interchange with the BNSF.

For the Nebraska Northwestern, Dakota Junction is the lifeline for the railroad, with all traffic going through the junction.

And for the BNSF, it receives and gives cars via Dakota Junction and it provides the link for the railroad to an important short line that fixes it's cars, which would have to be shipped hundreds of miles to the nearest repair facility large enough to handle all the coal gondolas that wear out.

So what would this look like as a model?

To accurately model this section of the line as an independent railroad, I'll need access to staging at three points, to look something like this:

The staging yard is where all trains originate as it represents Crawford, Rapid City, and Chadron.  The Rapid City and Crawford lines enter the scene at the wye.  Wiring the wye would be tricky because it is a wye that is integrated into a reverse loop.  Another option would be to separate the Rapid City and Crawford staging so that one or the other terminates in it's own yard.  But for this diagram.  Either way, the staging track will loop around and then re-enter the scene as the Nebraska, Northwestern line on the right side of the yard.  The yard itself, just like the prototype, is three tracks that hold several dozen cars. Between the wye and the yard is a long bridge that is at least 600 feet long that crosses the White River, which is only about 50 feet wide in the spring, reduced to a trickle by fall.

All in all, I think this would make an excellent show layout.

Here's what I envision as a layout:

But what if someone doesn't like wiring for reverse loops?  This layout could still operate without a wye, and operations might be a bit more interesting!

Using a 32" by 80" door for a platform, this small layout captures the operation of Dakota Junction without the use of a wye or reverse loop.

Rapid City Pierre and Eastern trains can come down from the top and either continue directly South to Crawford, or head around the layout only to loop back through the crossing after passing through the interchange yard.

Nebraska Northwestern trains have to come through the interchange yard in order to access either the RCPE line or the shared trackage south to Crawford, Nebraska.

Oelrichs, South Dakota

This is the first real town North of Dakota Junction.  Located in Fall River County, South Dakota, Oelrichs has a population of 126 and sits right alongside the main line of the Black Hills Sub-Division of the Rapid City Pierre and Eastern.

The only industry in town is a small grain elevator which, amazingly, still seems to be in use.

This town is also where I graduated high-school, which is the town's main employer.  Like most of the small towns in South Dakota, the infrastructure is decrepit, many houses are single-wides surrounded by cars on blocks, and every house has an unkempt yard with cottonwood, oak, or evergreen trees.

Here is the view track side:

 

The Grain elevator at Oelrichs is small, but apparently being used.  I had always thought this was abandoned, but apparently not!

Judging by the number of cars, this particular elevator can only hold enough grain for a few hoppers, probably about 13.

Another possible explanation is that the siding is simply being used as winter storage for the cars, as is apparent in other small towns.  I just like to think positively.

Moving Forward...

The truth is that I've given Montana Railroads a shot, and they simply don't interest me like the RCPE.  Montana is a beautiful state, but 95% of the rail traffic happens on BNSF rails, with Montana Rail Link taking up most of the remaining 5%, and some UP stuff happening in the extreme Northwest and Southwest portions of the state.

The main industries in Montana for railroads is mining/logging, petrol products, wood, and grain products.  But to put things in perspective, all of the Flathead valley only produces about 350 carloads of grain in a year.  Butte and Anaconda has large copper mines, and there's plenty of timber to go around, but right now it seems that the logging industry is contracting down to a few mills, mostly owned by big corporations like Weyerhaeuser. The copper mines are still active, but not producing near the quantity that they once were, and the smelters have closed.  That's great for the environment and state of Montana, I suppose, because then everyone can move on from the old ways.  The trouble is that there is very little need for local rail service in Montana, mostly everything just comes in one side of the state and out the other.

Some modelers love to model the large unit trains, and more power to them, but I prefer the smaller branch lines, of which almost every branch in Montana has closed, or is struggling.  Simply put, besides beautiful scenery and unit trains, there's not too much out here in Montana to model in the present day.  So just like the state, I'm afraid I too must move my interests elsewhere.  Enter the Rapid City Pierre and Eastern story:

The RCP&E is a regional railroad that hauls over 52000 carloads per year, bringing fully loaded cars of grain, cement, asphalt, petrol, ethanol, and other goods from facilities primarily in South Dakota to the Canadian Pacific, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, or Union Pacific railroads at points along it's 628 mile route.

Begun in June of 2014, the railroad has become an instant success.  Turns out giving control of day to day operations to local employees is a great way to ensure a smooth running operation.

Starting out in Tracy, MN, the mainline heads west, past Brookings, Huron, Pierre, Ft. Pierre, Wall, and terminating at Rapid City.  The Rapid City line runs from Dakota Junction in NW Nebraska to Colony, Wyoming, with Rapid City being in the middle.  Not entering the Black Hills, but rather skirting around their outer tree-caped hills.

With Beautiful scenery, local interest, and a rock-solid roster of SD40's and GP38's, the RCP&E has basically everything I could want in a railroad, and so that is what I will model.

Finally, after years of searching, I've found the railroad which I would like to model, and I hope that the prototype lasts just as long as my models, if not longer.

So cheers to the Rapid City and Eastern!  I can now move forward!