Trains traveling on the Rapid City, Pierre & Eastern Railroad (RCPE) track from Fort Pierre to Rapid City will soon have the option of going faster thanks to upgrades made to that stretch of the railroad company’s track.
Improvements made during the nearly finished, $84 million, multi-year, public-private project include replacement of 88 miles of rail with continuously welded rail and more than 80,000 new crossties have been installed. When the upgrades are finished, RCPE will be able to allow trains to operate at speeds from 25 to 40 mph on that stretch of track.
RCPE reminds the public, as always, to exercise extreme caution around railroad tracks and crossings, obey all crossing signs and signals, and expect that a train could move on a line at any time – day or night – from any direction.
The Fort Pierre to Rapid City railroad track upgrade project was supported by a U.S. Department of Transportation grant as well as funding from both the State of South Dakota and RCPE.
RCPE, which runs more than 600 miles from Colony, Wyoming, to Tracy, Minnesota, with a branch from Rapid City to Crawford, Nebraska, was established in 2014 by Genesee & Wyoming Inc. The railroad connects with BNSF and Canadian Pacific Kansas City to offer customers access to the entire North American freight-rail network and markets beyond.
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