  We investigate quantum quenches and the Loschmidt echo in the two
dimensional, three band $\alpha-T_3$ model, a close descendant of the dice
lattice. By adding a chemical potential to the central site, the integral of
the Berry curvature of the bands in different valleys is continously tunable by
the ratio of the hopping integrals between the sublattices. By investigating
one and two filled bands, we find that dynamical quantum phase transition
(DQPT), i.e. nonanalytical temporal behaviour in the rate function of the
return amplitude, occurs for a certain range of parameters, independent of the
band filling. By focusing on the effective low energy description of the model,
we find that DQPTs happen not only in the time derivative of the rate function,
which is a common feature in two dimensional models, but in the rate function
itself. This feature is not related to the change of topological properties of
the system during the quench, but rather follows from population inversion for
all momenta. This is accompanied by the appearance of dynamical vortices in the
time-momentum space of the Pancharatnam geometric phase. The positions of the
vortices form an infinite vortex ladder, i.e. a macroscopic phase structure,
which allows us to identify the dynamical phases that are separated by the
DQPT.
