Here's a photo I took on August 23, 1996, TWENTY-SIX YEARS AGO, while making my way across the UP Hoisington Subdivision, a former Missouri Pacific property that has either been downgraded to branchline status, is dormant, or is abandoned.

This photo was taken at Shields siding (MP 655.6), on a segment of the line that has been abandoned. A sixty-mile segment of line between Healy (MP 665.0) and McCracken (MP 605.3) has been abandoned and lifted, and this scene is within that zone. The Pen Dennis DTC block was named after the hamlet of the same name, located at MP 649.4.

Unlike the Milwaukee Road western extension, where the track looked pretty deplorable in its last years, this line had an excellent physical plant until the day the track was ripped up.

I would imagine most all of the rails, ties and ballast that you see in this photo have been re-cycled elsewhere on the UP system.