The engineers must have loved that this railroad crossroads was as flat as a pancake. After climbing the summit a couple hours before, the flat river valley must have been a welcome sight. In the good old days,this crossroads owed it’s existence to the railroads. It was served by GN,CNW,Milwaukee Road, and the “Tootin” Loui". The area still puts a lot of grain onto the old grainger lines. Where is it?
Aberdeen, S. Dak.
The “big hill” on the Milwaukee Road east of Aberdeen is one of the more interesting – and least-known – open-ridge crossings in North America. It shows up dramatically on a large-scale relief map of the United States. Also interesting is the large sums Milwaukee Road invested in line changes and double-tracking in the Milbank-Aberdeen stretch in the early 1900s. The least-known “super-railroad” alignments, perhaps; big cuts, big fills, broad curves, and potential for very high speeds. Of course to the east and west of this region the alignment is not very good at all, but one imagines that Milwaukee Road had designs on improvement until they were scotched by the collapse in its fortunes.
S. Hadid
Right you are! I’ve always marveled at how much fill was moved to elevate parts of that track above the surrounding prairie. Other than the yard areas in the towns along the way, I don’t recall a lot of double tracking, at least on the Summit to Aberdeen portion. Do you know if the horseshoe curve east of Bristol was part of the original alignment, or something done later, to lessen the grade?
I’m speaking from memory because the track chart is at home, but as I recall the line was double-tracked at least during the 1920s-30s, and the horseshoe was part of the grrade-reduction project.
S. Hadid
Were you thinking the whole section was double tracked?