by John Adams
For those of you who either could not make it to the recent Minot convention on June 19-22, or decided not to, you missed a great convention!
We started the week with an operating session on Michael Farley’s HO scale BN layout. His layout had a decidedly local flavor with his main yard in Mandan and much of the switching in Bismarck. He included a SOO Line portion of the layout and set the layout in the summer of 1978. There were about 8 of us who were able to operate his layout, which ran superbly throughout the evening. Michael was a great host, and the evening was very enjoyable. I personally learned why BNSF paints orange stripes on the rails to identify fouling zones!
On Wednesday afternoon we met at the Grand Hotel in Minot, which served as the convention hotel. Unfortunately the hotel had started on some renovations, which caused a few hiccups in rooms and the common areas (no pool). We then took off for The Hacienda,, a local steak house just west of Minot with great food and truly incredible prices. After a great dinner we met again at the hotel and Jeremiah Siembida, a local resident with a lot of knowledge of the railroad scene, was able to give us a great overview of the local railroad and restaurant scene. He gave us the bad news that the wooden pedestrian bridge over the Old Yard had been closed, but noted we could see a lot from the 27th and 55th Street bridges. He also explained the different railroads, particularly the short lines, which we would be able to see in the area. He concluded his remarks by giving us some great restaurant recommendations.
We met early Thursday morning for breakfast and then loaded on a school bus to head for Gavin Yard. There the terminal superintendent rode with us on the bus to show us the highlights of the yard facilities. Historically, Gavin Yard was built in 1954 and named for the recent past president of the GN at that time. It was a state-of-the-art electronic hump yard at its inception and remained so until it was converted to a flat switching yard in 2011. 35-40 trains per day come through Minot, a number of which are switched, and the remainder are fueled and inspected. The 280 employees employed in Minot are split into five day jobs, one of which is a remote operating job, 3 PM jobs and 4 night jobs. They classify 200-300 cars daily and run through freights to Havre and Northtown as well as locals east and west daily. We were able to get some great camera shots of some unique equipment, such as a Fracht caboose in the yard. Their usual switcher power is a combination of an SD40-2 and GP38-2. They also explained that the line of C44-9W’s that we saw on the trip to the yard were LURF (Laid Up Revenue Freight), being kept for the grain rush.
We then visited the car shop, which is one of the newest on the system. Their main jobs are the replacement of wheels and work on brake systems, and along with a mobile wheel truck they repair about ten cars per day. We were able to watch a “simple” wheel changeout on a gondola, but also heard that they have had to change out a wheel set on the middle of an articulated Autorack. They also explained that they repair draft gear and make necessary minor repairs with the 8-10 employees on duty each shift.
After lunch we met again at the Railroad Museum of Minot, which they opened especially for our group. The volunteers showed us the three floors of the museum with a number of displays from the GN and BN days. On the main floor they had several N scale display layouts, but downstairs they had a huge and very well-done operating N scale layout. The amazing part of this display was that this was built, maintained and operated by a group of only 9 members! Outside they had four real cabooses of different vintages, two of which were open for us to visit, a speeder car, and a snowplow. They also had a number of photographic panels showing the construction and opening of Gavin Yard. All in all, it was a very impressive museum, run by a small number of dedicated volunteers.
For the rest of the afternoon we split up and did some local railfanning and then had dinner before the membership meeting. The membership meeting began after dinner and brought out several suggestions for the board of directors. These included the feeling that the oral histories in the Expediter were much appreciated as well as the communications presented on the website. Several members recommended that we try to document and possibly visit sites that are being shut down. As we discussed future conventions, suggestions were for Ft. Worth, Birmingham, Alabama, and Springfield, Missouri At the end of the meeting Jeremiah reported that he had obtained permission to enter private property on the SE side of the Gassman Coulee Trestle for a great photo opportunity on Saturday morning.
The board meeting followed this, and we discussed a number of issues. One of the most important was to agree on holding our convention for 2025 in Ft. Worth, with the hopes that we may be able to piggyback onto any activities that the BNSF might have with the 30th Anniversary of the railroad. Because of this we felt we had to leave the date for the convention open until we can get more information about BNSF’s plans.
On Friday morning we headed west of Minot to railfan and grabbed some lunch before meeting at the Berthold Elevator complex. There we viewed a large complex of elevators, built between the 1940’s all the way until the last addition in 2014. During this time the elevator expanded to be able to store over 1.2 million bushels of various grains. These included the big three of red spring wheat, soybeans and canola, but also seven minor grains. The elevator serves almost 500 local farms and ships grains to domestic markets, a number of Mexican markets, and Pacific Rim buyers. Our host Les Simons explained that despite the linear appearance of the tracks around the elevator complex, because being able to use their on-site locomotive (unfortunately an SD40T-2 in UP colors), they are classified as a loop track and can load a 100+ car unit train in about 18 hours. Each train holds about 435,000 bushels of grain and they can store up to three trains worth of grain on-site. They also can weigh, load and certify each load and train on-site. Each car is scanned and loaded into their computer system, which then gives the empty weight as well as the total loaded weight. They used to lease their own cars but found it difficult to control the fleet and now load cars from numerous sources. With their proximity to Minot they can call BNSF when a train is ready for pick-up and will sometimes see the power show up in 10-15 minutes! At the end of our tour, we were able to watch a farmer bring in a load of grain and watched the testing procedure and the load certification. With the price for his load set the farmer was able to dump off his load and go back for another.
We then drove over to the nearby Birdsall Farm complex. The company itself grows seed grains and sells this to local farmers. They also support the local farms, and this has led to a desire to have fertilizer to sell. There was a local frac sand facility built in 2011 to unload unit sand trains and distribute it to local oil drilling operations. When it was learned that the local sands would do just as well, the need to bring in sand trains became unnecessary, and the facility became surplus. Birdsall bought it to be able to use the facility to bring in fertilizer by rail, which is cheaper than trucking, and ship it to surrounding farms. Their seven bins hold up to 42,000 tons of dry fertilizer. Blake Inman, our host, then invited us over to see the seed corn plant and the equipment they used to bring in seed grains and clean, grade and package it to sell in bulk to local farmers. The number of operations and machines to accomplish this was truly fascinating! We finished Friday evening with a photo show of the area around Minot with several members showing their well-done pictures.
On a cloudy Saturday morning we were able to visit the area just southeast of the Gassman Coulee trestle. Fortunately, our short wait was rewarded with a westbound plus a number of eastbound trains and some great photo opportunities. From our somewhat elevated vantage point we could see the CPKC main line about a 3/4 of a mile away, and were rewarded with a westbound manifest at the same time an eastbound BNSF train was crossing in front of us. We then split up to railfan the area east of Minot for the rest of the day.
Our banquet was held at a very nice local restaurant with a great menu and excellent service. With the inability to secure a speaker from the railroad we were able to use the time of the banquet to explain to our members the process that was used to transfer the FOBNR archives to the Pacific Northwest Rail Archives in suburban Seattle. This group provides archival service for the NP, GN, SP&S and Milwaukee Road historical societies and has an impressive program to organize and digitize the materials. This will allow our members to more easily access archival materials that have been donated to us. The process began several years ago with the Board visiting the PNRA facility and using the mini-convention last year in the Twin Cities to pack 67 boxes of archival materials and prepare them for shipment to the Seattle area. This was accomplished early in 2024 and accepted by PNRA. They are now in the process of organizing our materials and several of our members are volunteering in this process. Since much of this work can be done remotely, there are ongoing opportunities to volunteer to work with these materials.
We then concluded the banquet with our annual auction, which included some excellent photographs from Al Christiansen and a custom decorated HO scale FOBNR grain car from John Parker. With the additions of these items the auction helped improve our financial receipts for the convention.