As many of you know, my primary modeling interest is the early days of the Burlington Northern (1970-1974) in Crookston, Minn., my hometown. One of the rail-served industries that has long intrigued me is the Otter Tail Power Co. (OTPCO) power plant. The 10,000 kilowatt plant, which hugged the banks of the Red Lake River along Crescent Avenue, was built in 1949 and closed in 1975. I wasn’t around to see it in operation. My only memories of the plant are what you see above.
When I looked to the east from our front porch, I saw a tired brick and concrete structure with broken windows; a rusty, weathered smokestack; and the remnants of the framework that once proudly displayed the power company’s name. Though the track that served the enclosed coal hopper was removed, the remnants of the rail still scarred the ground. The adjacent track that went over the open coal hopper was there, as were the bases for the car pullers.
A little help from some friends
Researching the OTPCO power plant in Crookston has been a journey. I started the old-fashioned way, with maps. Through the Minnesota Historical Society and a now-retired friend at BNSF Ry., I was able to get copies of railroad maps showing the track arrangements and industries in Crookston, including one that showed the OTPCO power plant. As you can see above, the map contains a wealth of information, including the footprint of the plant, the lengths of the retaining walls, the locations of the open and enclosed coal hoppers, among other items.
Another friend, retired professional railroader Daniel Holbrook, shed even more light on the power plant. While doing research for his own HO scale model railroad depicting the Twin Ports of Duluth, Minn., and Superior, Wis., he came across some helpful nuggets of information on the Crookston plant. It used lignite sourced from the Baukol-Noonan Mine in northwest North Dakota. In 1957, the plant used 66,500 tons of lignite. By 1964, the plant ran on 25% lignite (approximately 5,300 tons) and 75% natural gas. As a snapshot, in 1962 the Crookston power plant averaged 40 cars per month. The peak months were October and December, with 69 and 64 cars, respectively.
Daniel also noted that before the March 1970 merger that created Burlington Northern, the lignite was shipped in Great Northern 50-ton two-bay hoppers and 70-ton PS-3 hoppers. After the merger, Northern Pacific 50- and 70-ton cars were added to the mix.
Armed with that information, I started paging through Todd Sullivan’s NP Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment (Morning Sun Books, 1995) and Scott R. Thompson’s Great Northern Equipment Color Pictorial — Book Two, Freight Cars (Four Ways West, 1996) looking for information on the 50- and 70-ton hoppers rostered by both lines. I now had some leads for finding the right freight cars.
A lucky find
Railroad employee newsletters are an often-overlooked research tool. While surfing eBay one weekend, I came across listings for issues of BN’s Twin Cities Region News from the early 1970s. The cover story on the September 1972 issue was “Lignite at Noonan” with a black-and-white image showing freight cars at the mine. The undated image shows 50-ton cars from GN’s 73200 through 73699 series in the foreground and gondolas in the background. The photo isn’t dated, but was most likely taken in the mid- to late-1950s based on the car and the paint schemes on the GN rolling stock.
The article provided a brief explanation of the lignite mining process as well as the traffic it generated for BN. “Production of lignite from the Noonan seam began in 1929,” the article stated. “Early sales were primarily to homes and small public and commercial buildings. Today such sales represent less than 10%, with a major portion of the remaining 90% moving to sugar beet processing plants and electric power generating plants.”
Time to buy
Feeling my research had reached critical mass, it was time to begin finding the right freight cars in HO scale. The photo above shows a pair of two-bay offset-side hoppers. The Athearn car (left) is decorated in a paint scheme used by GN between 1948 and 1956. The Atlas Trainman hopper (right) wears the railroad’s later Mineral Red scheme with white slant-serif lettering and a two-color herald. In the foreground is an InterMountain drop-bottom gondola.
Are the two-bay hoppers and drop-bottom gondola 100% accurate models of the full-size GN cars? No, but I can live with that. With a bit of weathering and some loads for the Atlas and InterMountain cars, these cars will look the part. Now I need to start thinking about how I’m going to model the power plant!
