Durand Line - South End

In the fall of 2010 Terry Yust, Dave Linderud, Carl and Pat Morsbach, and I checked out the south end of our speeder line.  None of us had been on this section of track and we were anxious to see what it looked like.  It was a perfect day for walking, about 40 degrees with no wind.  We parked our cars on Highway 35 and started walking north.  Here is what we faced:

 Right away we came upon trestle M18:

  
Shortly after we found a small washout:

  
No train has run on this track since 1977 so here is what happens:

We saw lots of evidence of wildlife but the only animal we actually saw was a muskrat.  But there was lots of evidence of beavers.  Here's one of their dams:

To build the elevated roadbed over this swampy area (officially called the Tiffany Wildlife Area), the original builders scraped ground from alongside the track:

We walked about 2 miles north until we came upon a major problem--think I could make it across in my speeder??

I did walk around it and got this shot of Terry, Carl, and Dave:

We could have gone further, but walked back.  Supposedly there are a couple more washouts beyond the one above.  We adjourned to the Bar-B-Que restaurant in Nelson.  I had a SUPER pulled pork sandwich.  Try this place sometime, you'll like it and all the antiques on display.