Wilpen

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LDE - Wilpen

Prototype

Heading east out of Iron Junction toward Biwabik, the ex-DM&N tracks pass through Wilpen yard.  Wilpen seems to be almost in the middle of nowhere.  There is no town, as is so often the case.  But the yard continues to this day as an important place to park shorter strings of ore cars to be assembled into full trains to move to the docks.

A part of Wilpen is a wye where engines could turn.  This wye also ran off to GN Wilpen Junction, and interchange with...  you guessed it, the Great Northern! The line continued on to the Sherman and Fraser facilities, and Missabe road trains often departed from this shared DM&IR/GN facility.

Model

To get the plan to "work", my version of Wilpen has the wye on the wrong side of the yard.  Wilpen yard sits on the opposite side of a load-bearing wall from Rainy Junction, and the wye for Wilpen and the wye for Rainy overlap.