On a lonely, dry plain the locomotives can rest after a hardy climb out of the river bottom. There’s not much for the train crew to look at. The local elevator loading out a dozen or so grain cars shares a siding with a few fertilizer cars waiting to be unloaded. There is no engine house, only an old shed made from a boxcar,and an elevated tank car that used to be utilized for a fuel tank. A turning wye is overgrown in weeds. Bad water and the lay of the land meant that this section of the railroad probably dieselized quite early on the railroad. If it’s hot and dry, like most summer days are,the train crew could walk to the small,busy downtown area for free ice water. Where is it?
//shakes the dice
Wall, SD.
[:O][(-D] Holy cow! It took me longer to type that than it did for you to answer it.[:D] Where do I send the trophy?
//shrugs shoulders
Been there, had the free ice water. Something went “click” when you mentioned that.
Have you dug Wall Drug?
My wife worked there 2 summers during college. We have family in Rapid City. Everytime we go by Wall, we have to make an hour and a half nostalgia trip.[xx(] Last time, I just made it an hour and a half railroad exploration trip. That was about one hour and 15 minutes more than needed to take in the whole experience.[:P]
Several summers ago we went through there on the way back from the Black Hills- we took one of our former foreign exchange students from Germany, who had come back for a visit, on a camping trip to see “the four faces” as he called them- of course we had to swing in there and let him see the large jackelope, the animated dinosaur, etc.
A sad memory from that trip- met an older couple in Wall that was doing some motorcycle touring out of Wisconsin on a big touring bike pulling a trailer, they were headed back home- a couple of hours later, west of Mitchell a ways, came upon an accident scene, it was them- not sure what happened, but they ran off the freeway- our daughter did some checking just recently looking through news archives and found out that one of them died in the accident.
I was at Wall Drug many years ago, remember that there was a two story depot there, I imagine it was a depot with living quarters upstairs for the agent and his family. Is that depot, by chance, still there?
I saw no sign of a depot. Because it’s in a small town in western S.D., I wouldn’t be suprised if the building was moved somewhere locally and re-used. Next time I’m in Wall, I can use my whole hour and a half to search the town for clues.[:P]