Late afternoon departure from Hill City. In recent years, the Black Hills Central Railroad has been running a 5 PM departure during prime vacation season. They are one of the few tourist railroads in the US to run this late in the day. And while there aren't a whole lot of locations in which to capture images of the train in this great light, the few that exist are superb. Here's Locomotive #110 pulling the standard, 7-car passenger train on that 5 PM departure, just about a quarter mile outside the yard in Hill City, SD, bound for Keystone, some 10 miles distant. The locomotive is beginning to smoke here as the grade is beginning to increase and the crew is starting their charge for Tin Mill Hill. In just a few hundred yards, #110 will be tackling grades in the 4-6% range, and she'll be using all of the 37,500 lbs of tractive effort that she has to get this train up the hill.
