South Dakota Railroading and Railfanning In "The Mount Rushmore State"

South Dakota railroading today has lost much of its heritage although both Class I carrier, BNSF Railway and Regional, Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern continue to have a significant presence in the Mount Rushmore State. Part of the reason South Dakota has lost so many miles of railroad is the result of numerous branch lines that tapped grain elevators and other agricultural business in the state’s eastern regions, which by the 1950s was either switching to other modes of transportation or could no longer support so many railroads in the granger region. Western South Dakota in the mountains of the Black Hills used to include much trackage serving numerous mines although today only include the DM&E and BNSF’s line to Wyoming’s lucrative Power River Basin coal region.

South Dakota railroading has its beginnings dating back to 1872 when the original Dakota Southern completed its main line between Vermillion and Sioux City, Iowa a distance of roughly 37 miles. Following the Dakota Southern the Mount Rushmore State would find itself home to well-known Midwestern railroads like the Milwaukee Road, Chicago & North Western, Burlington and Rock Island.

While the North Western and Milwaukee had the greatest presence in South Dakota only the Milwaukee also operated its Pacific Extension main line through the state. The Milwaukee decided that to stay competitive with the Great Northern and Northern Pacific it needed to likewise build a main line to the west coast, which it began at the beginning of the 20th century and had completed by 1909 (by building this line so much later than its two competitors the Milwaukee had an overall lower maximum grade but it sacrificed online traffic for speed by skipping most large cities between Minneapolis and Seattle, which became both a blessing and a curse).

Over the next six years the railroad worked to electrify much of its Rocky Mountain and Coastal Divisions, which earned the railroad its legendary status. The Milwaukee, while initially planning to electrify its main line entirely from Harlowton, Montana to Seattle, Washington (and the rest of its Puget Sound operations), never completed a gap between Avery, Idaho and Othello, Washington. In total, however, the Milwaukee would operate roughly 660 miles of electrified and railroad.

While the lack of online traffic along its main line in the Pacific Northwest hurt the Milwaukee this direct route was a forced to be reckoned with when the piggyback revolution (i.e., truck trailers fixed directly to railroad flat cars) caught on in the 1950s and 1960s as the railroad was one of the first to embrace it and began service in the mid-1960s (featuring such time sensitive freights as the XL Special and Thunderhawk). Because of its clear advantage of a direct route between Chicago and Seattle the Milwaukee Road soon dominated the market in the west.

With its web of branch lines in the Midwest, including South Dakota, with several other railroads fighting for the same amount of traffic that could no longer support so many railroads, the Milwaukee Road found itself in a hopeless situation on the eastern half of its system (and it was unable, along with the other railroads, to abandon most of these unprofitable lines because government regulations did not allow for such until the 1980 introduction of the Staggers Act which deregulated the entire industry).

However, all was not lost for the Milwaukee. Its savior, for the time being, was its Pacific Extension. Even as the company’s management began to make increasingly idiotic decisions during the 1970s (such as scrapping the electrification just as the oil embargo hit) and defer maintenance across the entire system, their main line to the Pacific Northwest continued to earn the company a healthy profit.

Sadly, though, the company’s fate was sealed when, in another short lapse of vision, management decided in the late 1970s to scrap the entire system west of Miles City, Montana, some 1,100 miles of track! While the results of this and other abandonment projects on the eastern side of the system worked in cutting costs the now much smaller railroad, which no longer competed for the lucrative traffic entering the Port of Seattle (which today is booming), made for a prime merger target and in 1985 the Soo Line Railroad purchased the company. With the purchase thus closed the book on one of our country’s most interesting and dynamic railroads.

It should also be noted that even as Milwaukee was piling up trains along its Pacific Extension with slow orders and derailments, as track conditions worsened, the railroad astonishingly still continued to receive a majority of the container and trailer traffic from the Port of Seattle. The Milwaukee also, ironically, brought about its own bankruptcy because of its deferred maintenance to the Pacific Extension. Even as the track got worse the railroad continued to move large amounts of freight over its Chicago-Seattle main line to such a degree that the lack of maintenance literally forced it into bankruptcy as the infrastructure could simply not handle the heavy volume.

In total railroads operate less than 2,000 miles of rails in the state although at one time South Dakota railroading featured over 4,000 miles of trackage. For a more in-depth look at the state’s rail mileage over the years please take a look at the chart below.

While South Dakota railroading does not include many museums or tourist railroads it does feature the famous Black Hills Central Railroad which operates the last running Mallet, a 2-6-6-2T type.

Along with its Powder Rive line, today, BNSF operates the remains of the Pacific Extension between Terry, Montana and east through Aberdeen and Minnesota. The rest is the domain of Regional DM&E and shortlines like the Dakota & Iowa Railroad, Dakota Southern Railway, Ellis & Eastern Railroad, Sisseton- Milbank Railroad and the SunFlour Railroad.

In all, South Dakota railroading includes some interesting and unique operations on a beautiful backdrop setting of our country’s Northern Plains region. While railroading here is not as prolific as it once was you will quite likely enjoy seeing that which remains, from main line railroading to local shortline operations.