By Dan Meyer and Dawn Holmberg
November 2nd and 3rd, 2002
Dawn and I went touring this weekend with the Northern Division of ACME Railfan Tours (1). We camped overnight (60k) at Camden State Park, about 10 miles southwest of Marshall. Overnight lows were in the low 20's; daytime highs were about 40. The BNSF railroad route between Willmar and Sioux City runs through the park a few hundred yards from the campground. There was one other soul in the campground, and he was hardy enough to be sleeping in a tent!
On the drive out, we inspected the Minnesota Prairie Line from the junction with the Twin City Western at Norwood to all the way to Morton. I took a look at the railroad at Green Isle a couple years ago, and it was a sad weed-grown sight. There hadn't been a train in quite a while. Today, the railroad is in better shape than I've ever seen it, and I've been familiar with for over 15 years. There is new ballast everywhere, and all ties are now in good condition (54k). As recently as 5 years ago, only one tie in 10 was good, and derailments were a common occurrence. Today, almost all ties are good, and derailments are not likely to happen. The railroad appears to be an honest 10 mph railroad today, and it wouldn't take a lot to make it a 20 mph railroad.
We stopped at Hamburg (looking east (48k) and west (51k)), Green Isle (looking east (28k) and west (43k)) and just west of Arlington, where we saw this interesting little industrial locomotive (50k). We also stopped at Winthrop (looking east (33k) and west (50k)), where my uncle used to live. He moved several years ago, before this plant (18k) was built on the east side of town. We also stopped in Gibbon (looking east (33k) and west (34k)) and inspected the facilities there. There isn't too much business there today, but the siding switches are still in place.
The neatest structure on the line is the Fairfax Depot. (looking east (41k) and west (33k)). Some group has turned this depot in to a nice museum, and they have even obtained a semaphore signal and placed it trackside. For some reason, they placed it the wrong way, but it does look nice. The depot is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (80k). Fairfax also has a fair sized (25k) grain facility on east side of town. This worn-out wheel (114k) is evidence of a lot of work equipment in the area. On the siding we found several cars stenciled MPLI (16k).
The next town west is Franklin. There was a side dump car attached to a rail-mounted crane (35k) sitting on the siding. At Morton we saw the engine house (38k) and a cut of cars sitting on the bridge (66k) west of town.
West of Morton, the highway has been re-aligned. There is a wayside rest part way up the hill that has a wonderful view of the railroad (57k). It would be a very nice spot to photograph a westbound train.
We checked in with Camden State Park office at about 4:00, and proceeded to set up camp. While leveling the trailer, we noticed a noise coming from a tire; we were unable to locate the noise. We then drove into Marshall. Along the way we looked for and found a couple benchmarks (53k) we found on the GeoCaching web site. We found the railroad depot in town, drove around a bit looking for the place where the abandoned railroad (CNW) crossed the existing railroad (BNSF ex-GN). We stopped by the Dairy Queen on the way out of town, and returned to camp. We had supper, cleaned up and out to downloaded pictures from our digital camera to our laptop computer.
Sunday morning we awoke, had a leisurely breakfast and found our trailer had a flat tire (30k). The repair was pretty easy. A can of fix-a-flat, and a 12 volt air compressor (38k). There were minor problems with our 12 volt outlet in the trailer, so Dawn walked off to take pictures of a waterfall in a small stream. I inflated the tire and hooked the trailer to our Jeep. Update: The tire was removed at home, and it indeed had been punctured by something. It was repaired at Beach's Long Lake Service, an gas station and garage we highly recommend.
We drove into Marshall, and while I filled up with gas, Dawn walked over to take pictures of the depot. We drove to Russell, MN and found two more benchmarks. One was right where it was supposed to be in front of the bank (38k), and the other was exactly where it should be according to the written description, but the GPS coordinates were off by a hundred yards or so.
Our next stop was where the DM&E railroad passes under the BNSF railway. There was an interesting abandoned farmhouse (21k) about 1/2 mile south. From there, we drove to Burchard, MN on the DM&E to photograph another benchmark.
Onward to Tracy, Mn, where we found a neat little museum that had several old buildings and a short train (51k). We also went into town and had lunch near the tracks and elevator.
From Tracy we proceeded east through the countryside, watching the farmers harvest crops and till the soil. Just before Cobden, we came upon road construction. What we found was the crossing of the Sleepy Eye Creek by both the DM&E Railroad and highway (23k).This is a major construction project. The highway is still closed, and will be for the winter. The railroad has been re-located to a new modern bridge, and a remnant of the old bridge (22k) can still be seen.
From here, we turned back and made our own detour down county roads. Our Delorme Atlas and Garmin GPS helped guide us. I am always amazed how nicely maintained the gravel roads are in southern Minnesota. Usually gravel roads are so washboarded they are very unpleasant to drive, but not here. We returned to the highway, traveled to Sleepy Eye and turned north. Traveling through Fairfax we continued north and turned east at Hector to follow the TC&W railroad. We made a brief stop at Glencoe, and saw a recently acquired CF7 (40k) and a couple other locomotives at the railroad's locomotive shop and office.
We heard on the radio that there was rain and snow 40 miles north of us, and the dark skies in that direction looked plenty nasty. We never saw any precipitation, however. Our next stop was home.
Note (1); The Northern Division ACME Railfan Tours has extensive experience with railfan tours for more than 15 years. In 2002, we have toured the semaphore equipped BNSF Raton Pass line in New Mexico twice, as well as the Black Mesa and Lake Powell Railroad, The Durango and Silverton Railroad, The Colorado Railroad Museum, the Union Pacific's Nebraska Mainline, and much much more. We also rode passenger trains on the Erie Mining Company Railroad, the Cumbres and Toltec Railroad, the Grand Canyon Railroad and the Verde Canyon Railroad.
