Back from vacation

I got back from vacation today, it was primarily to go to my nephew Sam’s first birthday party but we did a little sight-seeing as well. I was driving so I didn’t get to take many pictures of the trains I saw on the way, additionally I wasn’t in charge of the camera so we got more pictures of things like Mount Rushmore and the cave we visited.

On the trip out we saw a line currently used for storage with a long line of green lumber cars (almost blended in with the scenery). I also spotted a convoy of RJ Corman trucks and equipment going eastbound on I-90.

While in Rapid City and the Black Hills in general we saw a number of trains in various locations, they were mostly blue and yellow DME and ICE (now subsidiaries of Canadian Pacific). I did spot a Soo Line MP15 in pretty repair (most of the Soo locos I see around my area show plenty of wear in the paint department). We also stopped by the 1880 Train in Hill City (but didn’t ride it) and visited the South Dakota State Railroad Museum (next door to the 1880 train). It’s a smaller museum but had a lot of very interesting pieces, for example we found a time-table for the Winona & St Peter Railroad which was interesting for us as up until November 2010 we lived in St Peter. We stopped in Lead, SD and ate lunch at a very nice restaurant that in an old narrow gauge round house (Website here).

We also found license plates from more than 40 states (lost the list and exact count) and two Canadian provinces! I managed to also get a bit done on my module this afternoon but nothing much to write about, more on that in a later post.