Black Hills and Eastern Railroad

Somewhere I'll make and place that little sign that appears by that switch between Minnesota Ave. and the track, north of the Benson Rd.     It is a station sign style sign that read 'WEST JCT".  It denotes the place where the BNSF (former Burlington Northern, nee Great Northern) splits off and goes north on its way out to Crooks, Lyons, Colton, etc. before finally hitting Wentworth, SD, where the former GN track is truncated.  The line makes use of a connector track to access Madison on former MILW track.  The odd part is that the line still uses the old Milwaukee Railroad mile marker numbers on that section of track.  Or at least it used to. I'm consolidating the line for selective compression to handle traffic for both the Burlington Northern Madison Subdivision and the D&I Railroad's northern-most track from Sioux Falls to Dell Rapids.   The top level as it appears below is where Northern Sioux Falls will give way to rolling countryside and the flood plain

 The High Line is now terminated in the Sioux City yard.   Well, we have subroadbed to Sioux City, anyhow.   The tangent shown as the righthand switch here is the continuous running loop which will connect this line to the main level. No track laid yet, but the interchange at North Sioux Falls now has subroadbed installed for the interchange which will be needed for continuous running. What will become the lower level staging yard at Sioux City, IA.  Access on the left is from the High Line which will represent the [compressed] CB&Q lines in Nebraska out to Edgemont, SD. The line behind the yard will represent former MILW / GN lines north of Sioux Falls to Crooks, Madison, Renner, Dell Rapids and Morefield, SD.    We'll be modeling these as operated by D&I Railroad, BN and local fictional shortline Morefield Southern.

 

PDF link to the multi-deck plan here .   One sheet per deck.   The first level is southeastern South Dakota.  Upper level is the South Dakota Black Hills, starting with Custer with the branch to Hot Springs, SD.   Lower Level exists to support Sioux City, the main yard and staging for the other decks. Here are some scratches that I've been keeping in a Google doc about the towns that will be modeled and some potential indistries to be modeled.  Will be a mix of real and ficticious. Stations / Towns Whitewood - staging for DM&E / FEMV - Hidden staging level Tracks spaced 2 inches on center. Off the helix, we’ll put a #8 left hand switch followed by two RH #6 switches Deadwood Use Walthers City Station as stand-in for C&NW station  Fisher & Hunter T. C. Fruit Co Lumber Yard Orohondo Cyanide tanks Kirk / Yates yard     Coal dump for the power plant - maybe some traffic for Lead, SD and the Homestake mine. 91 can only handle 3 loads up to the plant from yates.  227 can hand