Goin' Mobile-A Dance Gypsy's tour of the country

   As thought, last night was pretty quiet after the hectic running around of the previous couple of days. I did go out for a nice drive in the late evening, seeing lots of deer and about 30 head of elk. Most were seen in the last 30 mins of light of course, so they were hard to pick out at times, but I was able to discern a couple of spike elk, one 2x2 bull and one small 5x5, most likely he was only two years old. All the others appeared to be cows and calves just out enjoying a nice cool night of munching on some farmers alfalfa field.
    One really cool thing though, was seeing at least 7, there may have been 1 or 2 more, whitetail bucks silhouetted against the red tinged sky. Most were smaller 2x2, 3x3, etc., but there was one really nice 5x5 with a really broad spread. It was nice to see them though, and all of the other deer I saw last night, because a couple of years ago this area experienced a viral disease of ruminants called Bluetongue disease. It usually isn't that contagious among deer species as it's main vector is sheep. But once in awhile it will hit other species like cattle, antelope or deer. For some reason whitetails in this area really got hit hard back then killing a lot of them in a very short amount of time. So they have been in short supply around this area since then.
    Very cool temperatures last night. When I finally went to bed after finishing up another book, it was already down to 52 degrees. I imagine it got down into the 40's for sure, but forgot to check the thermometer this morning to see.
    Spent most of the morning just hanging out at the trailer reading and cleaning up a bit. I hit the road around 2:00 p.m. where my first stop was at the State Park office at the entrance to the park. Had to go in and see if they would let me stay for another week even though it is suppose to be a maximum of 14 days at any one time. But then, since I got there two weeks ago, they haven't been full in the campground, even over the 4th of July or Fur Trade Days weekends. They let me stay in the end, money up front trumping maybe getting some one else coming in later, thereby proving that money still triumphs over most anything else. How sad.
   From the park it was on to a barbershop here in Chadron. There is one guy there that owns it and that I have gotten a haircut from for 3 years now. He always does a good job, is quick and he is pretty cheap over all. Came out of there with shorter hair and feeling much more cool.
    I'm headed out to Fort Rob. after I finish up here. The play for this evening is a tribute to Frank Sinatra. Not sure what that really means, but I am sure it will include someone singing a lot of the songs that Frank use to like.... and I like those.
    Other than that, there isn't much else going on. I will have another play on Thursday and plan to hang out with my nephew and his girlfriend tomorrow night. There are still a few things around in this area that I haven't seen and there are always things that I don't mind going back and looking at again.
   But right now there are a bunch of pictures below from the trip I took to the Black Hills of South Dakota last week.

1880's Steam Train in the Black Hills of South Dakota

July 7, 2014

The first view of the train as it pulls into the station at Keystone. Today the train consists of 7 assorted passenger cars while the locomotive is a 2-6-6-2T Mallet type steam engine.

This station has a short concrete platform that is long enough to unload the front 2-3 cars. Passengers in the cars behind them have to walk through the other cars to the head of the train.

Once the passengers are unloaded the engine is uncoupled and pulls into the station to fill up on water, it needs about 2,700 gallons for the trip, and a chance to look over all the moving parts.

The 'fireman' is in charge of climbing up on the tank and lowering the water tank spout down to where it can refill the tanks. This locomotive, instead of pulling a separate tender which holds water and fuel, has a tank that wraps around the outside of the engine fire box. This does several things, the first being that the weight of all that water directly over the driving wheels helps with traction and allows the engine to pull more weight. It also puts the water in direct contact with the outside of the fire box so that it is already warm when it is needed and therefor takes less fuel to bring it up to steaming temperature. Putting the water there also means that the engine no longer has to tow a separate car behind it and can therefor pull more cars that increase the bottom line. In this locomotives case the fuel it uses is used oil, and it is stored in a second tank located at the very back of the engine.

Looking at the front coupler on the locomotive.

The engineer spends some time oiling some of the many moving parts on the locomotive.

What makes this locomotive different from most is that it actually has two separate driving engines in one locomotive. In front of the engineer is the first set of 6 driving wheels, with another separate set of 6 just behind them to the left. The back engine uses high pressure steam running through the rear set of smaller cylinders to provide power through the driving rods. The front engine then takes that previously used steam, and because some of it's power, (pressure), has been used, it sends it through the larger front set of cylinders to drive that set of driving wheels. Note the difference in size between the front and rear cylinders. Those are the bulky apparatus just in front of the driving wheels of each engine.

Back in the 80's there was evidently a flash flood along the creek the train follows and it wiped out the last 3 miles of track into the town of Keystone. Since the line wasn't making much money at that time running freight the owners at that time never rebuilt that section. Instead they sold much of the land and infrastructure in Keystone, including the engine barn and turntable to the city which then sold it to Holiday Inn which built a hotel in it's place. So when the train was finally sold to the current owners they found that they no longer had a way to turn their engines around at the end of the line. So now when the train pulls into the newly built station it uses a short siding to 'run' around the cars and hook up onto the 'front' of the train for the trip back to Hill City. Of course this means the engine has to run backwards the whole way back, but that is actually no problem for this type of locomotive as you can see.

Being a short side line that was originally built to service the mines and lumber mills in the area, the line is built to much looser tolerances than modern day train tracks would be. The radius of the curves is much tighter as you can see, and the grade in some places along the line is more than 6%. A regular mainline seldom has a grade of more than 2% these days.

I'm sitting at the front of the third car back from the engine so you can see that the curves are very tight in spots.


That is the engineer sitting on the window sill of the locomotive watching what comes ahead of the train.

Some of the scenery along the way includes Haney Peak which is the highest point in the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains. There is a Forest Service tower located on top of it from which you can see 5 states on a nice day. The tower is now made out of native stone as the first two wooden ones were both struck by lightening and burned to the ground. How ironic!

You can tell by the smoke that the engine is working a little harder in this section.

Once at Hill City there is an hour to wander around and check out the train museum and gift shop as well as get a snack to eat. The engine also does it's 'run around' trick again so it is once again at the front of the train. It could actually move the train just as well from either end of the train but with 20 road crossing along it's 9-10 mile run it is better that the engineer is up at the front of the train to watch out for crazy people who try to beat the train.