Black Hills Railroad

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

The hobby of model railroading, like many hobbies, have a number of unique terms that are sometimes difficult to understand for people new to the hobby.  Below is a short listing of model railroad terms: A  Accessory: a non-essential electric device.  Switch motors, signals, and block switches are just a few examples.  Air brush: a device which applies paint using compressed air.  Like a spray can, but with a steady supply of air and a much finer mist. Alternating Current:  Electricity that switches direction of travel, typically 60 times per second (60Hz) in the US. Used mostly in O scale, 3 rail trains. Amperage: a unit of measurement for the amount of electrical current.  Analog: Control of trains without digital signals.  Either through AC or DC electric current. B Backdrop: a panel that is meant to give the illusion of distance on a mode railroad.  This can be a basic sky-blue board, painted scenes, photographs stitched toge...

While gold was discovered in the Black Hills in 1874, rail connections to Deadwood were not completed until 1891.  In that period of time, several communities were build as well as a large system of mining and logging camps throughout the hills.  All those materials needed to be hauled in, and all the minerals and timber needed to be hauled out somehow.  The only way into or out of the Black Hills was across 200 miles of prairie. Unlike the comfort of travel today by highway, travel across the "Great American Desert" in the 1800's was difficult and often dangerous.  South Dakota in the summer experiences intense heat of 100 plus degrees and cold winters with temperatures as low as -40 degrees.  Winter storms presented impassible trails, deep snow drifts, and frigid temperatures that would kill anyone without adequate shelter.  Thunderstorms in the summer could spawn high winds, micro bursts, and tornadoes.  Spring and Fall weren't pleasant either sin...

On Sunday night it was decided to begin construction on a couple of modules.  I do not know yet if these will become a layout, or if they will be photography dioramas.  So far I've only spent about 30 buck each on them for the foam and wood, that should be about half the cost total.  Each module is 1x3 feet and 5.5 inches thick.  1.5 inches of that is 1x2 lumber making up a frame and the rest is foam.  Below you can see the construction up until this point: Photo by James Willmus  Here is the overall setup for the module.  It's small and light enough to be used on top of a camera tripod.  I'll have to work on getting newer, better tripods as the head on this Vanguard has been cracked for years and is getting worse.  In the center of the module is a 1/4x20 insert so that a bolt can be anchored into the lumber.  If need be, it is possible to make a tall sawhorse and run a bolt up into the module.  These things are also light e...