More photos taken during the construction of the Hatfield Dam.

Click on any of the photos to see an enlarged copy.

At the start of the twentieth century, the GB&W passed over the Black River on this spindly deck truss.  La Crosse Water Power Company constructed a dam immediately north of the railroad bridge in 1907.  This photo from that summer shows the site just as construction got underway.  Compare this photo to a 1984 photo of the bridge.

The photo is just what it says: The Dinky at Hatfield.  This ex-Rock Island (#323?) locomotive was used for construction of the dam and ran on  the GB&W and other temporary tracks laid for construction of the dam.  Bob Gile found this photo of this interesting loco in some of his grandparent's stuff.

What is a Dinky?  Bob's friends tell him that it was a part for the loco, maybe the coal stoker.

Here is the Dinky at work on the west end of the dam.  The trestle crosses the channel that connected the impounded water with the power plant.

This September 1907 photo shows a GB&W 4-4-0 passing the construction site.  The crew of the train probably had no idea that their train was being photographed, let alone that the photo could still be available for viewing almost one hundred years later!

The Dinky pushes several dump cars on a trestle carry tracks that was not a part of the GB&W main line.  The dump cars most likely carried earth from the dam's excavation or aggregate for the concrete construction.

An eastbound GB&W train begins to cross the Black River bridge in 1909, not long after the dam was constructed.

Jump ahead almost one hundred years... the bridge and dam are still there -- although the dam needed a major rebuild after a collapse in a 1911 flood.  This portion of the railroad is still operated by the Canadian National, and the dam and Lake Arbutus serve as a reminder of the flurry of construction that occurred a century ago.