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Sometimes in life we must (or, should) take a different path than we had anticipated, even a short time earlier. This hobby can be no different, and the pull of granger railroading across the verdant fields and prairie of the upper Midwest has drawn me my entire life. Growing up, I spent numerous summers on my late fraternal grandparent's farm - and later, visited their new home town, after they retired. The little 'burg of Bowdle, South Dakota, population 400-and-something, hard along US-12 and the Milwaukee Road's mainline to the Pacific coast - 763.9 rail miles west of Chicago's Union Station.
I watched the last gasps of this erstwhile transcontinental in the mid-to-late 1970s and - after 1982 - when Burlington Northern took over from Terry, Montana eastward. Even into the BNSF era long cuts of outbound grain flowed from these rich lands of my forefathers - hard-working descendants of immigrant Germans that fled czarist Russia, from small communities near Odesa and Strasburg, Ukraine. The current struggles there against (again) imperialist designs of the Kremlin has reinvigorated my passionate feelings towards my heritage, and the land - there, and in the new world here.
My father and his dad - his namesake - both hail from "Lawrence Welk-country," this area of north-central SD and south-central ND largely populated by German farmers from the Black Sea region of the former Russian Empire. Towns like Bowdle where my dad grew up, Roscoe and Java, Hosmer and Eureka, South Dakota, and those slightly to the north like Zeeland (my grandfather's birthplace) and Welk's Strasburg, North Dakota. All of these townsites were founded by the CMSt.P&P railroad in the 1880s and 1890s as the St. Paul (as the Milwaukee was known by back then) pushed westward from the Minneapolis grain milling district.
Thousands of carloads of grain were shipped east over the years from elevators along these lines - boxcars (and later, covered hoppers) full of wheat, oats, sunflowers, corn, soybeans and, yes, barley - the bounty of the northern Great Plains carried away in freight cars lettered MILW for railroad whose namesake was better known as the Beer City. I can imagine many a bottle of Milwaukee's finest had originated from the family farm north of town, or perhaps from a cousin on the Geier side. I spent many a hour trackside pondering that very question, as the empty cars were shuffled in place to load during harvest.
This pull of heritage, coupled with some engineering challenges inherent to the design of my previous, still-born freelance attempt, has led to a change in direction on the 1:87 scale basement empire. I may re-attempt the DM&M theme later down the road, but for right now it will be western Minnesota or the east-central Dakota farm belt on my HO scale layout. Chosen era is a bit in-flux, as I have power and equipment ranging from MILW EMD SDL39 road-switchers to DM&E ex-Milwaukee SD40-2's and the latest GE power in both CP and Amtrak.
Regardless of era, tall wooden-sheathed grain elevators, concrete and corrugated metal grain silos and bins, feed mills and Co-op fertilizer and oil dealers will dominate the towns lineside, along with a local railroad depot (or station sign) and the proverbial municipal water tower proudly bearing the little town's name (and, sometimes, the school colors) will be present. Branchline or mainline (or both) will have long trains of grain cars being pulled from house tracks and sidings by local freights, while the high-iron is polished by manifests and a first-class passenger train or two.
Layout design and track planning is ongoing. More to come here soon, but in the meantime - Highball west!
