Sioux City Ia in its heyday had 5 RRs into town. The Burlington, UP, C&NW, Milwaukee, and Great Northern, plus the Omaha road which was a sub of C&NW I believe. The C&NW Iowa chapter had a conference there this past weekend. Because of the extensive packing industry, there existed a terminal RR to do the switching on the multitude of tracks.
We met at the RR museum on the west side of town, formerly the Milwaukee shops. They have a partially restored roundhouse, working turntable, cosmetically restored 2-6-4 Great Northern, some equipment, restored buildings, and a soon to be running small gauge RR 20inch? At one time nearly 600 workers manned the shops there. It was the second in size only to the shops in Milwaukee. It sits right along the Big Sioux river.
We bused over to downtown to tour the warehouse district, go by a couple of depots which still exist, although used for other things at present, and then to tour State Steel. Here they receive rolls of steel and process it into many things, such as flat diamond plate sometimes used in locomotive manufacture, and even pieces to the octagon power pole towers. The get some loads from Nucor at Norfolk, Ne, a lot from Chicago, and some from the Davenport Ia mill and some from Ala. They even import some Swedish steel because of its extremely high strength, which allows thinner sheets and hence less weight. The rolls from Chicago all come by rail, as the cost is significantly less that trucks. The Swedish steel comes into Chicago via ship and then by rail. They unload 10 cars in a good day. The gondolas are covered and are generally water tight.
We then went to the D&I RR yard. It was totally shut down so we were able to walk about, our guide was with the RR. The D&I principally hauls crushed granite (pink) from Del Rapids SD to S. City. That is the whole RR except for a short branch into Beresford SD. Del Rapids is up the Big Sioux river Valley, through Sioux Falls and then north a few miles. In the yards they unload a lot of 3 bay hoppers into a pit emptied by 3 parallel conveyors. They roster several SD40-2s, 9 GP9s one GP7 and an old switcher built originally in 1938. Hoppers are in tip top shape. Some other cargo does exist.
Next, to the metal recycle plant south of town. Here that buy scrap, currently at 200 per ton for ferrous, crush, grind and sort and deliver to mills as far a Chicago. Again by rail. Presently they are having trouble getting gondolas from UP. They have to sort out some of the ferrous to have some with low Manganese content. The mills can be picky. They use electronic equipment to figure those things out.
Finally we went up the Floyd River about 10 miles to Hinton Ia. Two main lines go along the highway. UP and BNSF. They cross each other just north of Hinton at a location once guarded by the Wren tower which was manned 24/7. At Hinton is a big Central Valley Ag elevator facility, the site of a big explosion a couple of years ago, with 3 new silos now replacing the damaged ones. Two SD18s (I think) are
stationed here owned by the elevator. One is ex C&NW. I caught a waiting BNSF ethanol train of empties changing crews. One unit still showed the warbonnet scheme. Photos attached.
He said he bought the train cars but never told his wife. 
That guy was instantly my greatest hero of all time!
After driving a few dozen miles, my wife broke the silence by saying, "Don't go getting any big ideas, buster!"
