DEADWOOD, S.D. (AP) - Deadwood’s fabled and famed pioneering railways running through the rocky surrounding hills might be a thing of the past, but one of Deadwood’s native sons with a passion for trains and a penchant for engineering, both structural and of the locomotive sort, is keeping a few paths of the legendary locomotives and the nostalgia associated with them alive - right in his own Huntsville, Alabama, backyard.
“I’ve always loved trains,” David Roesler told the Black Hills Pioneer (https://bit.ly/1N9f5cu ). “My uncle was an engineer on the C&NW train that ran from Huron, S.D., to Deadwood sometimes. I used to love to go down to the rail yards as a kid and once I had spent many years working and retired, I found my love for them had not gone away.”
Roesler was particularly struck by the large, long diesels pulling coal cars through Huntsville.
“Trains that had originated in the Powder River basin (in Wyoming) and were delivering coal to power plants south of Atlanta,” he said. “That inspired me to have one in my backyard.”
Taking up most of Roesler’s backyard, with a layout of approximately 90 feet wide by 50 feet deep, the main loop of the railway is about 250 feet around (long), with a total of around 550 feet of track on the ground, which includes all inner loops and sidings. A delightful diorama of Deadwood, everything from the strategically placed “boulders” and waterways to the historically accurate building, is truly a spectacle to behold and unbelievably similar in scope to today’s Deadwood and surrounding areas.
“Years ago, after moving to Huntsville, I had bought a few LGB train cars and engine for my Christmas tree train,” Roesler said. “In talking to my local hobby store owner, I learned these large G(garden)-scale trains were meant to run outdoors. He gave me an issue of Garden Railways magazine and in there, I found an ad for a Deadwood Central Bachmann 2-8-0 steam engine. Since I was raised in Deadwood, I bought it in 2002, where it languished on a shelf for a number of years.”
Until he formally began his backyard outdoor adventure in 2009, Roesler spent seven years in preparation mode, putting in sidewalks and sprinklers.
“Then in 2009, I started planning in earnest and began to survey my very rocky backyard,” Roesler said. “Surveying the routes the train would take and keeping the grades reasonable took a long time. Long story short, we moved big rocks around, cut through others to form canyons, and hauled in tons of rocks and many cubic feet of dirt. We spent a whole year just moving and cutting rocks and otherwise surveying the various routes the trains would take.”
After three long, hard years of work, the Roeslers held their first open house in 2012 and ran trains.
“We are loosely modeling Deadwood, S.D., and the surrounding area,” Roesler explained. “The layout is called the Deadwood Central, named after one of the railroads in the early 1900 Black Hills, and I run both old-time steam locomotives modeling that era and my version of a modern BNSF coal train. The romance for those big diesels just won’t go away.”
Roesler said the buildings are replicas and represent some of the actual buildings in town, complete with names, some of which are still standing today. Black Hills Merchantile, Adams Hardware, Martin’s Sinclair Service, Canyon Oil Company, The Bodega Cafe, The New York Store, Goldberg’s Grocery, Ewing Barber Shop, Kelly’s Dairy, Deadwood Feed & Fuel, and Burlington Route Freight Office are all represented.
“My railroad station is modeled after the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley station, which was later taken over by the C&NW, but I have called it the Deadwood Station, because that was always what it was to me. The buildings are a combination of scratch built or modified building kits. There are also buildings to model the power plant in Pluma, where my grandfather worked and the DeSmet Stamp Mill in the Central City area.”
In addition to classic Deadwood and Central City locales, there are buildings representing Lead, as well as scratch-built replicas of the Ellison Shaft and the Golden Star Stamp Mill, both associated with the world-famous former Homestake Gold Mine.
“There is also a little tramway between the Ellison and the stamp mill, replicating the JB Hagen that used to pull ore cars back and forth on the high line,” Roesler said. “That little tramway lets the JB run back and forth on the tramway, based on a timed schedule that can be programmed into the track. That area represents the three-level tracks that cross over each other, made ’famous’ in the pictures in Mildred Fielder’s book Railroads in the Black Hills.”
In Deadwood, there are a number of buildings representing those that were there when Roesler grew up, along Main Street.
“There is my version of the Slime Plant, where my grandfather worked as superintendent, I think, and the Freemont, Elkhorn, and Missouri Valley Railroad Depot, which I call the Deadwood Station,” Roesler said. “These last two were scratch-built from pictures and plans from the Deadwood city planning office. Remaining to be built is the sawmill replicating the one in Hill City and the Park Avenue Grocery Store in Lead that my Uncle George had back in the day. Once that’s done, the layout is prewired to start putting lights in the buildings for night-time running.”
The Roeslers run battery-powered steam engine replicas of the era and have three in operation, with three more currently being modified to look more like pictures David has of them.
“These engines pull mixed freight consists, log cars, ore cars, and passenger cars,” he said. “We also run a replica of the trolley that ran between Deadwood and Lead. And, of course, even though not of the era, we run a long diesel powered coal train like the ones that run from the Powder River Basin all the way through our town here in Huntsville to the Atlanta area.”
Out of 16 steel bridges, all handmade by Damian Cavasos of Mainline Bridges, one particularly showy specimen is a center truss bridge termed the “White House” truss.
“It is a bridge that was actually used in the 2011 White House Christmas tree G-scale train display in Washington, D.C.,” Roesler said. “Damian helped with that event and used the bridge there before he shipped it to us. It actually belongs to my bride Dianne without whom none of this would have ever been possible.”
Today, Roesler is fully retired, working on the last few buildings, putting lights in buildings, and hoping to let this work be a ministry to people, young and old. A number of friends, family, and church groups have visited the Deadwood Central.
Roesler says he’s happy admiring the hard-won tracks he’s made over the last decade, but that’s not likely to last long.
“Just like our lives, every train we see is coming from somewhere and going somewhere, and I pray that new place is ever closer to our maker,” Roesler said.
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Information from: Black Hills Pioneer, https://www.bhpioneer.com
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