Day 9, Monday, June 6, 2016
Minot, N. Dak.–St. Paul, Minn.

Photos by Dave Ingles

We were scheduled to leave our spot in the east end of BNSF's city yard in Minot at 3 a.m., mainly to ensure a mid-afternoon arrival in St. Paul in case any brave Explorers scheduled flights home out of MSP that evening. Our route was to be the BNSF "northern transcon,' using what for Amtrak is a detour route, the KO Sub, which angles southeast out of Surrey (it's also known as the Surrey Cut-off), just east of Minot, thru New Rockford, N. Dak. (about the only town of consequence on the route, pop. 1,400) to the Fargo area. At Nolan, the "transcon" (and Amtrak's detour route) angles more south-southeast to Casselton on the ex-NP main, there turning due east for Fargo. But the GN's Empire Builder used GN all the way into Fargo, going "straight ahead" at Nolan and directly into Fargo. That stretch, called the "Prosper Sub" is "rare mileage" to many, although I and Rick Moser got those 40 miles in July 1993 (the "year of the great floods") on a GN Rwy. Historical Society trangle-route excursion that began in Fargo, went south on the ex-GN main to Wahpeton (N.Dak.)–Breckenridge (Minn.), adjacent towns), then reversed and angled up thru Casselton to Nolan, and reversed again directly down the old GN into Fargo. The Wahpeton–Casselton portion was by then part of the Red River Valley & Western regional spinoff.

Somehow the Iowa Pacific folks, I think that very evening before, got BNSF's OK to not go thru Casselton as planned but traverse the Prosper Sub instead, to the delight of many passengers. I'm told by those who made sure to be awake that we left Minot at 3:15 a.m. and went thru Surrey at 3:47, New Rockford at 5:57, and stopped at Nolan from 7:15 to 7:27 before entering the Prosper Sub. So, having the KO Sub (which has scant scenery), I slept in, and made my first photo on what turned out to be a gray morning at 8:20 at Prosper itself, although the station sign "hid" behind bushes. In the 2nd photo, we may be looking at the entire community. It is not incorporated, not listed under N.D. cities with populations (some as few as 9!), and lost its post office in 1968.

This is JY Jct. at 8:40 a.m. in western Fargo, Mile 3.9 for the Prosper Sub, where in 1978 BN built a 2-mile connector, coming in from the left, for coal trains eastbound on the old NP to come over to the old GN and proceed east to a new wye connection allowing them to go north on the GN toward Grand Forks to serve a power plant on that line, the regular Amtrak route. Amtrak never used the old NP station (now municipally owned) in Fargo, always used the former GN depot (baggage room) as it does today, so when the North Coast Hiawatha was running (until 1979), it used this connector for about a year. Formerly, it had used an industrial track farther east from here, in Fargo, to connect, but we haven't learned the pre-BN ownership details on that track. The north end is still in, with a wye off the old GN, the west portion of which goes right thru a lumber yard rail customer; we saw two center-beam flats parked on it when we passed.

This view looks northeast, with the 1978 wye connection to the Hillsboro Sub for the northbound coal loads, showing in the middle, and a line of stored diesels in the distance, alongside the Hillsboro Sub main, the normal Amtrak route to Grand Forks. It's 8:44 a,m., and we're at Prosper Sub MP 2.5.

We've passed the point, Fargo Yard Office (for the old GN yard), MP 0.9 on the Prosper Sub from this point pictured, the former GN passenger station. The Amtrak facility is beyond it, to the east, by the tall light tower. The GN depot had been a very good brew-pub restaurant, but not sure what it is, if anything, now. We stopped here from 8:49 to 8:57, for what reason I don't know, perhaps a crew change.

Here we go over the Red River (of the North) from North Dakota into Moorhead, Minn., at 9 a.m. sharp.

We're across the ex-NP route diamonds at Moorhead Jct. at 9:08, after stopping just inside Minnesota from 9:01 to 9:05 to copy track warrants. A minute later we pass OTV Jct., named for the short line Otter Tail Valley, the short line which runs this ex-GN alternate route east to Fergus Falls. It formerly went on to the Twin Cities via Alexandria and St. Cloud. When I first visited Fargo-Moorhead in 1970 soon after the BN merger, a staffed interlocking tower still governed movements thru Moorhead Jct. BNSF's current terminal and yard for this area is east at Dilworth, Minn., on the old NP main line.

I had no room to pack a jacket, but my wife Carol loaned me her fleece she takes into cold supermarkets and restaurants, and this gray morning I needed it out on the Caritas rear platform! Phil Kondziela of Connecticut took my picture. We re-crossed the Red River back into North Dakota, MP 6.1 from Wahpeton, at 10:12 a.m. RRV&W ownership, with BNSF rights, begins here.

Outside Wahpeton I was surprisingly ready to shoot when we passed this pair of RRV&W SW1200RSs, units I didn't know it had, on an industrial lead.

At Milepost 0.5 at 10:28, we curve around toward Wahpeton Jct., where the line we are on, the former GN up to Casselton, and the former NP branch to Oakes, N. Dak., now RRV&W also, all come together. The signs at the junctions make things pretty clear.

At 10:31 we cross the Bois de Sioux River from Wahpeton, N.Dak., into Breckenridge, Minn., now at MP 215.3 measured from St. Paul. RRV&W Geep 404 is with a cut of cars on the siding to our right.

Red River Valley & Western's HQ and diesel shop are here in Breckenridge, at MP 214-plus, with Geep 4104 outside. BNSF ownership resumes at MP 213.4. RRV&W may be a mostly North Dakota railroad, but its colors are from the University of Minnesota, and its sister road with the same colors is the Twin Cities & Western. RRV&W operates 490 miles of railroad.

Two survivors from RRV&W's initial diesel fleet, ex-Santa Fe CF7s, 309 and 303, sit derelict east of the HQ/shop building but west of the yard, which is shared with BNSF. I spotted this covered hopper in said yard, decorated as I've not seen many other RRV&W cars done.

At 11:06 at MP 194.9, we crossed Soo's main line to Portal, N. Dak., and Saskatchewan (on parent CP), the Elbow Lake Subdivision. We look west on the Soo, and then north back up the BNSF. New signals are about to put in service at the diamond. In the view west on the Soo, the diverging track is a BNSF to CP connection, which diverged from our route at Aberdeen Jct., MP 195.5.

We passed Benson, originally the junction with the branch from Huron, S.Dak., at 12:37, but i missed a shot of a local freight there. More significant in BN and BNSF times is that the first junction of significance west of Benson is Appleton, former crossing of the Milwaukee Road's main line to the west coast. When BN took over the MILW from Terry, Mont., across South Dakota, BN trains (and "Montana" Explorer III in 1989) connected to the BN main line at Benson to go on east, which meant on this Front-Range Explorers, several passengers' "new mileage" down from Fargo and other points ended at Benson. Forty-five minutes later, our train rolled into the division point of Willmar, MP 102 from St. Paul, for a crew change that took place from 1:22 to 1:29. I photographed the depot and several locomotives in the yard as we departed. At this point the gray sky was breaking up into nice afternoon sun with clouds.

I was alert for a surviving BN SD7 in Cascade Green at the elevator in Litchfield, MP 76.4, at 2:05; this is the hometown of Kalmbach Books employee and author Jeff Wilson, who despite growing up in a GN/BN town is a Burlington Route fan.

Into the Twin Cities suburbs, we skirted Lake Minnetonka's north shore as we rolled thru Wayzata (an Indian word meaning, yes, north shore), MP 24, a town of 4,000, at 3:16. The lakefront has a spot in my memory from a photo i made of a mostly Big Sky Blue GN "Western Star" behind SDP units in 1968.

Tipped off by friend Steve Glischinski, I was ready as we passed the north edge of downtown Minneapolis, where 4 Northstar Commuter trains were staged for departures every 30 minutes to northern suburbs along the ex-NP line toward St. Cloud beginning at 3:57 . . . so we just snuck thru downtown before complicating the commuter operation, passing the Northstar platforms at 3:42. The Northstar station is next to (below) the Minnesota Twins' ballpark, where there is also an easy connection to the northerly station on the Cities' light-rail system.

After crossing the Mississippi River on an old GN bridge, at MP 10.6 east of where the old GN station used to be (the view looks downriver at the east side of downtown Minneapolis), we swung to the right at Minneapolis Jct. (home to MILW 4-8-4 261 and car fleet) at 3:46 and rolled into the Midway District.

At 3:51 we stopped just short of the St. Anthony interlocking. I shot a pair of lease units on someone's transfer freight, and we waited for a westbound Twin Cities & Western freight with 3 units to go by, leaving Minnesota Commercial's (MNNR) Midway Yard, on the next track (so no photos) at 4 p.m.

Steve was on hand and sent me two photos to use of us passing through St. Anthony, resuming our trek into Midway Station at 4:07. I'm one of two men (in my green BN cap) in the vestibule of the Great Dome waving, The tall young man on the ground in the dark blue shirt is Steve's son Andy, a freshman at Winona State University, whose campus is right by the CP main line.

We passed MNNR GE Dash-7 48 switching as we entered the tracks of the now-silent Midway Station, stopping at 4:17 to formally end the "Front-Range Explorers." After a while, I made a few photos of our train. The next day we would couple onto the Empire Builder to head homeward.

 
 

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