What a fitting subject for my 200th post–a visit to Minneapolis, my home away from home during my youth.

Above: A westbound Milwaukee Road freight train at Chanhassen, Minnesota in August, 1980. This is the first train picture I ever took. I was 16 years old.

My mother was from Chanhassen. Her father–my grandfather–owned a large dairy farm just west of town and we visited the farm every summer. Minnesota is where I started railfanning, and Chanhassen is where I learned to admire The Milwaukee Road.

Above. I broke the trip into two days so I could visit Jason Klocke in Humbolt and Clark Propst in Mason City. First stop on the way to Mason City: Caboose Stop Hobbies in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Below. I got to Caboose Stop around 4 p.m. after making numerous railfan, food, bathroom and coffee stops. Here’s the view when you enter. Clark told me the place was a glorious mess, and that I’d need a day just to orient myself. He wasn’t kidding. There was stuff everywhere. It was a lot of fun looking through everything, but also exhausting.

As I was looking for treasures in the store, a kind fellow asked me if I’d like to see the layout downstairs. Why of course I’d like to see the layout downstairs, I said.

Below. Here’s the view when you enter the large basement room. O scale trains span from end-to-end. The layout has a few loops, a roundhouse area–which is O scale consumes a whole lot of real estate–and a few branchline switching areas. I had fun admiring the layout and watching the big trains run.

Below. Here is the roundhouse area I mentioned. This scene alone is as big as my dining room table.

After spending an hour in the basement with the boys I didn’t have much time left to shop. I left the place without spending a dime. Sadly I also had to skip my trip to see Jason Klocke’s layout.

I drove straight up to Mason City and arrived around 7:30 p.m. The first stop I made was to East Park to see “Gene Green’s” M&StL engine. It is beautiful! It’s not really Gene’s engine, but he was instrumental in saving it, getting it to the park, restoring it, and getting a cover built over it. Gene is an old Vietnam vet and he’s way too humble to even admit he did all this work…but he did.

Finally, around 8:30 p.m. I checked in to The Park Inn Hotel, seen below, which was designed by Frank LLoyd Wright. I had a wonderful stay. I enjoyed my stay on another level too–my son is an architecture student so by staying here I got some serious bragging rights on him.

After a good night’s sleep I got up about 0630 to start my day. I had a 1030 appointment with Clark so I spent an hour or two railfanning around town. And what a place this is to railfan! Eventually I found my way to The Trolley and chased a train up and down the line for an hour. This is the coolest little railroad I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of cool little railroads.

There’s a nice railfan website at https://railroadfan.com/wiki/index.php/Iowa_Traction_Railway that says The Iowa Traction Railway Company, formerly the Iowa Traction Railroad Company, is an electrically-operated common carrier railroad running between Mason City and Clear Lake, Iowa, that also serves Rorick Park near Mason City. It can trace its roots back to the Mason City and Clear Lake Railway, which was founded in 1896.

This semaphore guards the old C&NW and CGW crossings in the middle of town.

A roster shot of No. 54, one of five electric motors operated by the carrier.

I quit railfanning at 10:30 a.m. and drove to Clark’s house a mile or two away. Clark models the Minneapolis & St. Louis RR Story City branch, which has been featured in Model Railroad Planning and a few other magazines.

Here’s the view that greets you as you enter the basement layout room. Marshalltown staging is on the right, McCallsburg and Roland are on the peninsula, and Story City is on the left. On the immediate left is Clark’s mini-layout, Karlberg.

You can read more about the layout on the Resin Car Works site at http://blog.resincarworks.com/deciding-on-a-new-layout-adventure/

Below. Here’s a map of the M&StL system with the Story City branch highlighted.

Below. Clark took a picture of me stumbling around like a goober looking at the layout. Roland is on the right; Story City–end of the line–is on the left.

Below. Here is McCallsburg, Iowa. This is the first town as you leave Marshalltown staging. There’s a long siding here and a lot of customers piled up on the track in the foreground. We switched out all the customers we could, but also left all the Marshalltown cars on the siding to pick up on the way back.

We’ve cleaned up the railroad at McCallsburg and are now rounding the big curve into Roland. Here we will switch all the trailing point industries, take an empty or two we can use at the end of the line in Story City, and leave all of the facing point deliveries and pickups for the trip back.

Below. This is an opposite-direction view of Roland. Clark has modeled a neat feature at Roland–the elevated track to the grain elevators on the right. The prototype used the hill to move loaded and empty cars at the mills when an engine wasn’t available.

Another view of Roland, below. The depot is off camera to the left.

Below. Here is my motorman, juggling his iphone and his protothrottle.

Below. A view inside the peninsula at the end of the layout. Everything is nice and clean and organized, and the layout runs great.

Below. We’re at Story City, the end of the line. You’ll note our caboose is already trapped in the middle of our train. I foolishly bickered with my motorman about the sequence of pickups, and got things all messed up. After studying the problem it turned out he was right.

Some of the moves here aren’t intuitive. You have to “play pool” here–you’ve gotta think 2-3 moves ahead and get the engine (the cue ball) in the right place for each move, and do it with as few moves as possible. It is a whole lot of fun.

Below. On the way back to Marshalltown we delivered a few empties to the elevator. Just like the big railroads, we have to work the hill to deliver empties to the two elevators.

After running trains Clark took me to a local restaurant to get a Maid-Rite sandwich, which is a “loose-meat” sandwich, and some fries and a root beer. It was good! Clark told me not to put it down or I wouldn’t be able to pick it up again, but since we already know that I can’t follow instructions I just turned it upside down and then put it down–and it worked!

After lunch Clark took me to Bob Gretteliat’s house nearby to see his expansive Rock Island Layout. Here’s Bob, below, with only a small portion of the basement visible. It is huge, has two or three decks, and is about as big as the Rock Island ever was.

The only obvious difference between the real Rock Island and Bob’s layout is Bob’s trains stay on the track.

I learned a lot about designing and operating prototype-inspired layouts, and I enjoyed railfanning on The Trolley. I hope you enjoyed the little tour.

On to Minneapolis! – John