Black Hills Railroad

Presented by Rick Mills during Railroad Days 2017 at the Historic Prairie Village, this lecture covered many topics about the history of railroads in South Dakota.  This Youtube video is an edited, shorter version of that lecture. As the director of the South Dakota State Railroad Museum, Rick Mills has the task of educating people about South Dakota's railroad history. One form that education takes is through lectures, talks, and presentations at various events around the state.  If you are in the area, stop by the South Dakota State Railroad Museum for more information about railroad history.  Also don't forget to look up the museum's website for hours and dates of operations, upcoming events, new exhibits, and much more! James Willmus

Railroad Days happens every July.  Do to moving a couple of times since the 1st of July, I have only just been able to make the video about the Prairie Village Herman and Lake Madison Railroad. Please enjoy the video and don't forget to check out the Prairie Village website James

I am in the process of designing my first train layout depicting the Black Hills.  This is not my first layout, however, and so I would like to share with you some things that I would consider to be hard rules of layout design.  Do you have to follow them?  Of course not, it's your railroad.  But if you plan on creating a train layout that is realistic and easy to operate, please consider the following: Efficient track planning .  Railroads used the fewest number of turnouts possible to get the trains where they needed to go.  Some people may like spaghetti bowl layouts packed with as much track as possible, but it's far from realistic. A track plan that uses the fewest number of turnouts to get the job done saves a lot of money.  The bigger the layout, the more savings.  Rather than having a bunch of one car industries on separate switch tracks, combine all the industries to one track.  This makes switching more interesting during operati...

On the Great Plains, blood runs deep.  My family, both my mother's side and my father's side, been in the Midwest since the conclusion of the Civil War. My father's family came from Germany and Poland in the 1880's, initially settling along the Minnesota River outside St. Paul.  My great grandparents moved into St. Paul to take advantage of the rapidly growing economy in the region and they bought up large tracts of land which eventually became the town of Roseville, a suburb community sandwiched between Minneapolis and St. Paul north of Pig's Eye and the mill district.  Back then land was cheap and plentiful, but now it is scarce and expensive.  Over the course of three generations, my father's family has played an influencing hand in the Roseville area.  Even in present day, one of my Uncle's serves on the City Council.  This side of the family undoubtedly needed the railroad to bring in new homeowners and help build the economy of the Twin Cities of Mi...

My first project, which should take a couple of weeks, will be to make a comprehensive list of museums, heritage railroads, and interesting sites related to the history of South Dakota's railroads.  The list will be separated by region; Northeast, South East, Missouri River, Western Prairie, and the Black Hills.  Within each region, the list will be ordered alphabetically. The entire list will be available as a PDF and as a dedicated page on this site. --James Willmus