Black Hills Railroad

South Dakota Public Broadcasting has on their YouTube a Channel a 30 minute documentary on the formation of the George S Mickelson Trail. While there is not much information about the history of the Railroad, it is an incredible documentary about Black Hills and South Dakota Communities coming together to preserve some of their past. Please check out the documentary, Piece of  Heaven , below: Thank You! --James Willmus

It's my dream to one day have a model railroad in it's own room, preferably with another room or an annex with a workbench and storage. But I don't want to have just any layout room.  I want an immersive train room, one that acts as a time machine taking people back to the steam era of the Black Hills in South Dakota.  There's plenty on the topic of layout visuals, but comparatively little has been said about sound.  Lighting, colors, fascia, backdrops, etc... have articles galore, but what about the sounds you'd hear trackside in the modeled area? One thing that I think would add a whole new dynamic of realism for a railroad would be to have ambient sound.  The Black Hills of South Dakota, being very rural, would have the ambient sound of creeks and streams, mild winds, birds, insects, grasses waving in the breeze, waterfowl and the rustling of trees.  Some sounds, like those created by wind or birds, would be omnipresent, always there no matter where a person

Trestles were once, and still are, common across North America. In early 1830, America had a total of 23 miles of track. However, by 1890 America's railroads had increased dramatically to 163,597 miles according to a page on the  Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum . In order for this expansion to happen, many rivers and lakes needed to be crossed and many valleys, canyons, and gulches needed to be bridged, but bridges were expensive.  However, one of the cheapest types of bridges was the timber trestle, and so that's what railroads used.  Trestles had the advantage of being built in manageable sections from lumber that could be felled locally, or brought in by rail from forests hundreds of miles away.  Timber trestles also used a minimum amount of iron, mostly seen in the bolts, nails, and staples used to secure the joints. Trestles are constructed by driving vertical columns of wood into the ground and stretching to track level in an "A" frame s

Sheeps Canyon is located between Minnekahta Junction and Edgemont, South Dakota on the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Deadwood Branch, better known as the highline.   On this spot in the southern hills, a subsidiary of the CBQ, the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad, needed to cross the canyon with a bridge.   Like most railroads of the time, the standard way of crossing a large ravine was by timber trestle. Sheep Canyon Trestle prior to filling in 1899.  Photo credit: The Railway Age Vol. 28, Issue 15, 1899. Sheep Canyon Trestle days after filling has been completed.  Photo credit: The Railway Age Vol. 28, Issue 15, 1899. Trestles are a type of bridge that uses steel or wood metal bents, vertical columns, shaped in an “A” style frame.   Between every two columns are spans of horizontal or diagonal braces.   A trestle can be made from any number of these “A” shaped columns.   Most trestles are small, crossing little gulley’s or very small creeks.   The Sheeps Ca