Tomah, Onalaska & Western
Owner: Dave Hopper
The Tomah, Onalaska and Western is a freelance shortline located in west central Wisconsin in 1969. It runs from Tomah to Onalaska. It also provides service south from Tomah to Camp Douglas and from Onalaska north along the Mississippi to an interchange with the Green Bay Western. The TOW also interchanges with the CB&Q. Most of the traffic to and from the TOW will be carried by the CNW and Milwaukee Road dropping cars and picking up outbound traffic at the TOW yard in Sparta. The TOW does not have a main source of revenue but depends on traffic to and from several grain elevators, sand and gravel pits, cement plant, the Toro plant in Tomah, a brewery, several other industries, warehouses and traffic to Camp Douglas and Fort McCoy. The TOW occupies about 730 sq ft., is double deck and has about 165 feet of mainline.
06/07/2015 The first operating session was April 2014 a few glitches were found and fixed. Jerry Pyfer put together a dispatcher plan based on Milwaukee practices of the time period and we first used it in November of 2014. The system is setup so we can operate with or without a dispatcher depending on the number of operators. There are about 400 cars and 30 locomotives on the layout at this time . Scenery at this time is about 10% done and work continues on a regular basis in attempt to always have something different for each monthly session. Probably the most unique thing about the TOW is the very unconventional yard at Sparta. Rather than double ended or stub end, Sparta yard is stub end back to back with engine house and ladders in the middle and allowing both ends to work at the same time. The TOW operates on Digitrax and operators are always welcome to bring their own throttles.
