A leased former Southern Railway GP38-2 leads a Twin Cities & Western train past the restored Minneapolis & St Louis Railway depot in Fairfax, MN on a cold and windy spring morning in April 2018. The semaphore signal is simply for display. It was relocated here from Hanley Falls, MN, a town approximately 50 miles west of here, where the M&StL crossed the Great Northern's Willmar to Sioux City mainline. That location is notable for being the subject of a court case against the railroads. When the crossing was constructed, no connecting tracks were put in between the two railroads, making interchange cumbersome and virtually impossible. Eventually, livestock producers along the M&StL sued the railroads, demanding that they build a connection so their cattle could get to the more lucrative Sioux City market via the GN instead of having to be routed all the way through Minneapolis on the M&StL. The railroads both fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court, but the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and the connection was built. Interestingly enough, those connecting tracks have outlasted the crossing itself, as the BNSF still uses them several times a week to run their local from Willmar to Madison, MN via the former M&StL. My understanding is that this semaphore is actually from the GN side of the crossing rather than the M&StL, but it's still nice to have a piece of that history on display here.
