In 1967, Chicago Burlington & Quincy‘s 114-mile Alliance to Sterling line is not at all what it will become in just a few years, when the flood of coal from the Powder River Basin starts moving south to Texas power plants. But there is traffic on the line this June 10, as SD9 354 and a companion climb a short hill north of Dalton, Nebraska (population, 500) with a couple dozen hoppers loaded with ore from Colorado Fuel & Iron’s Sunrise Mine near Guernsey, Wyoming, for the company's Minnequa (Pueblo) works. This track, which skirts the western edge of the Nebraska Sand Hills, was spiked in place in 1900 by Nebraska, Wyoming & Western, which became part of the Q in 1908.
