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A Trip to Railfan Iowa 12/29/2009

Bob Cox picked me up at the Depot Inn & Suites at 6:15 AM and after we turned on a heater in the Silvery Rails Gallery, drove north on US Highway 63 through Kirksville and on to Lancaster, where we turned left onto Missouri Highway 202, which took us into Iowa, where we turned left onto Iowa Highway 2, taking that into Centerville, our first stop of the day. We found that the Appanoose County Railroad motive power is kept inside their engine house here.

The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Centerville station.

The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Centerville station built in 1911 and since 1990, has been home to the Appanoose County Post 526 VFW Hall. The railroad bought the Keokuk & Western Railroad in 1903 and Centerville served as a division point on the line and by 1910, the people in the town started to plan for a larger station. Its architect is unknown, but the depot was probably designed by a CB&Q architect using fairly standard plans that were used by the railroad at the time. It was used by the railroad until 1982 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.

Burlington Northern caboose 11396, orginally Northern Pacific 10050, built in 1954. We left here and drove north on Iowa Highway 5 to our next stop in Moravia.

The Moravia Wabash station built in 1903, believed to be one of the two standard-plan wooden Wabash combination freight and passenger depots that remain in the state. The Queen Anne-style building is an example of the rural combination station plan and houses the Wabash Depot Museum, featuring railroad artifacts, an operational model train layout and a restored railroad section car. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.

The Iowa Southern Railway station in Moravia. It was 35 mile shortline running from Albia to Centerville, Iowa and originally formed as the Appanoose County Community Railroad in 1984 to preserve Centerville's rail access. The line is made up of former Wabash, Rock Island and Burlington Northern trackage in Monroe and Appanoose Counties. Today, the it serves many customers between Centerville and Albia, and exchanges cars with BNSF and Canadian Pacific.

From here, we continued north on Highway 5 towards Albia.

The Relco facility in Albia before we went into town to find our next prey of the morning. We looked around for it and asked at the Casey's for directions but those did not take help. Finally at a hardware store, we received the proper directions to the Monroe County Historical Musuem.

Northern Pacific HH660 127 built by American Locomotive Company in 1940 painted as Chicago, Burlington and Quincy RE602. It was donated by Relco Locomotive Works.

Chicago Burlington and Quincy caboose 13555, nee Burlington Northern 10421, built by the railroad in 1954. We then stopped by the BNSF mainline.

Burlington Northern spreader 972618.

BNSF Power for the spreader. We continued north on Iowa Highway 5 to Knoxville, where we turned left onto Iowa Highway 14, which took us across the Des Moines River to our next destination of the morning, Newton.

The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Newton station built in 1912. We then found the Iowa Interstate yard, but an engine was switching out of view, and also found the shop building where the railroad's QJ steam engines were stored. We left town and continued north on Iowa Highway 14 to our next stop.

The original Minneapolis and St. Louis freight depot in Marshalltown.

The Chicago and North Western freight house in Marshalltown.

The Union Pacific yard as we left town; we drove west on US Highway 30 to Colo then turned right on US Highway 65 and at Zearing, took the road into town.

The Minneapolis and St. Louis depot in Zearing built in the 1880's. Back on US Highway 65, we continued north to our next stop in Iowa Falls.

Iowa Falls Illinois Central station built in 1902. The Dubuque & Sioux City Railroad, an affiliate of the Illinois Central Railroad, laid the first rail track to Iowa Falls in 1866. The following year, the Iowa Falls & Sioux City Railroad, another IC affiliate, continued construction of the line to the west and it reached Sioux City by 1870. They built a plain, two-story frame depot to serve Iowa Falls. The Burlington, Cedar Rapids and Northern Railway, by way of its affiliate the Cedar Rapids, Iowa Falls & North Western, entered Iowa Falls in 1880. They built their own depot. It was basically another east–west route, but local business leaders desired a north–south route to serve the community.

Iowa Falls businessman E.S. Ellsworth founded the Des Moines, Iowa Falls & Northern Railroad in 1899 with the intention of connecting Iowa Falls to Des Moines. They utilized the IC facilities in Iowa Falls for their local services. The IC decided to upgrade its facilities in 1902 and the new depot was typical of the second generation IC depots in Iowa, featuring their standard floor plan, brick walls, a hipped roof and simple interior finishings. It served as a union depot until 1908 when the DMIF&N was acquired by the St. Paul & Des Moines Railroad, a subsidiary of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. They built their own bridge across the Iowa River, and their own frame depot southeast of the union depot in 1909. The union depot continued to serve the Illinois Central until it discontinued passenger service in Iowa Falls and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.

Iowa Falls Illinois Central freight house.

The 1909 Mills Tower display is where the Canadian National and Union Pacific cross each other today, and is part of the Mills Tower Historic District.

The Illinois Central section house.

The Illinois Central arch bridge visible as one enters Iowa Falls from the south. We continued north on US Highway 65 to our next stop of Mason City and the reason we drove all the way here.

Iowa Traction steeplecab switcher 50:2, ex. Iowa Traction 53, exx. Kansas City, Kaw Valley and Western 507 1956-1963, exxx. Cedar Rapids and Iowa City 58 1948-1956, nee Washington and Old Dominion Railway 50 1920-1948, built by Baldwin/Westinghouse in 1920.

We spotted our next Iowa Traction engine as we drove west.

Iowa Traction steeplecab switcher 60, ex. Iowa Terminal 60 1961-1987, exx. Mason City and Clear Lake Railway 52 1948-1961, exxx. Union Electric Railway 80 1932-1948, nee Youngstown and Ohio River Railroad 5 1937-1932 built by Baldwin/Westinghouse in 1917.

Iowa Traction flanger 32, of Milwaukee Road heritage, details unknown.

Iowa Traction snow plough 31, details unknown.

Iowa Traction snow plough 40, a former gondola coonverted to a plough, details unknown.

Iowa Traction 51, ex. Iowa Terminal 51 1963-1987, exx. Kansas City, Kaw Valley and Western 505 1954-1963, exxx. Cedar Rapids and Iowa City 57 1940-1954, nee Northeastern Oklahoma 2 1921-1940 built by Baldwin/Westinghouse in 1921.

Across the street from the shops is a scrap yard with a remote control switcher.

Our last Iowa Traction picture is of former Illinois Central caboose 9353 built by the railroad in 1972. From here we went to find the Milwaukee Road station.

The Mason City Milwaukee Road station built circa 1895.

Iowa, Chicago & Eastern GP40-2 4207, nee Southern Pacific 7246 built by Electro-Motive Division in 1984. We made our way east on US Highway 18, which we took into Charles City.

The Charles City Milwaukee Road station built in 1912.

The passenger cars belong to the Charles City Western Railway. We then took US Highway 218 to Iowa Highway 3 and turned right en rout eto Waverly.

The Chicago Great Western Railroad Waverly station, built in 1904, is now a Sub City Restaurant.

The origin of this station was easy to find. We continued east on Iowa Highway 3 to Oelwein and our last destination of this day.

The objectives of the Hub City Heritage Corporation are to encourage and promote the preservation and restoration of railroad memorabilia as pertinent to the Oelwein area. To establish, furnish and maintain a railway museum for the education and enjoyment of the general public.

The town of Oelwein was laid out in a cornfield purchased from G .A. Oelwein in 1872 on the coming of the Burlington, Cedar Rapids and Minnesota Railroad. It was later called the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad usually referred to as the Rock Island.

Hub City Heritage was formed in early 1987 and opened the railway museum on June 14, 1987 and by 1989 we first acquired the Railway Express building. Hub City Heritage later acquired the two-story yard office building and the 75-foot dispatchers' tower, which is the last of the CGW dispatchers' towers and the last tower in the State of Iowa.

On a continually basis Hub City Heritage acquires railroad equipment. Some of the largest railroad rolling stock that has been preserved a Chicago, St Paul Minneapolis & Omaha SW1 #55 switch engine with its cast steel frame built in 1940, an Chicago Great Western EMD FP7 “F-unit” locomotive repainted in its original factory Chicago Great Western EMD colors, a 40' CGW steel box car built in 1944, a CGW covered hopper plus other rolling stock. The Rock Island 17958 caboose was built in 1914, the CGW 637 bay window caboose was built in 1963. Our latest motive power acquisition is the Minnesota Transfer 62 S1 diesel switcher locomotive built in 1941.

The Railway Express building was originally the home of Wells Fargo and Company Express in 1912. Shortly after WWI in 1918 the structure was acquired by the American Express Company and in 1930 became the Railway Express Agency. The original building was one-half of what it is now and the cost to build it was $4,146.56.

Alpheus Beede Stickney was a lawyer-turned-railroad magnate who had found work in management of several railroads before striking out on his own.

In 1854, the Legislature of the Territory of Minnesota had chartered the Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad (M&NW) to be built between Lake Superior, Minneapolis and Dubuque, Iowa. However, it stayed dormant until purchased by Stickney and another investor in 1883. Immediately, the railroad began building, and by 1886 had constructed a line between St. Paul, Minnesota and Dubuque.

By 1888, not only had the railroad changed its name to the Chicago, St. Paul and Kansas City Railroad (CStP&KC), it had finished a continuous line all the way across Illinois to Forest Park, Illinois, except for trackage rights with the Illinois Central across the Mississippi River. At Forest Park, the railroad made a connection with the ancestor of the Baltimore and Ohio Chicago Terminal for the last nine miles into Chicago's Grand Central Station. The new construction included Illinois' longest railway bore, the Winston Tunnel, south of Galena.

Through merger and construction, the CStP&KC then added lines between Oelwein, Iowa, on the Chicago-to-St. Paul mainline, and Kansas City, Missouri, by 1891, and between Oelwein and Omaha, Nebraska by 1903. Thus, Oelwein became the hub of the railroad, and its main locomotive repair shops were soon located there. The mammoth facility was said to have inspired Walter Chrysler, who worked as the supervisor of the shops between 1904 and 1910.

The Great Western also expanded its assortment of feeder branch lines in Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois, but plans to continue expanding the railroad north to Duluth, Minnesota, west to Sioux City, Iowa or Denver, Colorado, or south into Mexico, never came to fruition.

The railroad survived the Panic of 1893 to become the Chicago Great Western, and with Stickney at the helm soon developed a reputation for being an innovative and progressive competitor for traffic between the terminals it served. However, the Panic of 1907 forced it into bankruptcy, and the road was purchased by financial interests connected to J. P. Morgan. One of the first casualties of the buyout was Stickney, who was forced out and replaced by Samuel Morse Felton, Jr. in 1909. Felton realized that the railroad could not survive in the fiercely competitive markets it served without an ambitious and sustained effort to innovate and modernize. New rails, new locomotives including several Mallet locomotives (which set a precedent for the railroad acquiring huge locomotives with huge horsepower) pulled ever-longer freight trains over the system, and gasoline-powered motorcars to replace steam power on the lightly used passenger trains, were hallmarks of this rehabilitation.

Felton retired in 1929 due to failing health. At the time he stepped down, investors friendly with Patrick H. Joyce had purchased a controlling interest in the Great Western from J. P. Morgan and had placed him in charge of the Great Western. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 threatened these financial interests, so Joyce and his friends, along with the Van Sweringen brothers, embarked on a stock-manipulation scheme to keep the price of CGW stock high. The inevitable happened in 1935, when the railroad declared bankruptcy once again. It was reorganized and re-emerged in 1941.

Even as the CGW was being mismanaged, Joyce continued the modernization and innovation of his predecessors. The Great Western trimmed passenger service, which was never particularly profitable on the lightly-populated lines, abandoned branch lines and refurbished main lines, and continued acquisition of huge locomotives, this time 2-10-4 Texas-types, which pulled enormous trains, sometimes one-hundred cars long and longer. However, the most important innovation was the so-called "Piggyback Service", the forerunner of modern intermodal freight transport, which the Great Western introduced in 1936 by moving several hundred truck trailers on specially modified flat cars. The Great Western was also an early proponent of dieselization. It purchased its first diesel-electric locomotive, an 800-horsepower yard switcher from Westinghouse, in 1934, and was completely dieselized by 1950.

As it had happened in 1929, a group of businessmen friendly to William N. Deramus, Jr., president of the Kansas City Southern, had been purchasing up a controlling share of Great Western stock, and by 1949, this group appointed Deramus' son, William N. Deramus III, to head the railroad. He continued, even more aggressively than his predecessors, the modernization and cost-trimming that had become the hallmarks of the corporate culture of the CGW. Under Deramus, passenger service was almost entirely eliminated, and the railroad's offices, spread out in Chicago and throughout the system, were consolidated in Oelwein. Even longer trains than before, pulled by sets of five or more EMD F-units, became standard operating procedure, which hurt service but increased efficiency.

In 1946, the first proposal to merge the Great Western with other railroads, this time with the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad and the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad. Investors balked and the CGW stayed independent, but even as the Great Western survived and thrived during the 1950s, it was becoming increasingly clear that the American railroad climate was changing. Railroads were merging, changing traffic patterns and threatening the delicate economic balance in which railroads of similar size and stability to the CGW could exist. By the time Deramus stepped down from the CGW in 1957 to take the presidency at the Missouri-Kansas-Texas, the era of the railroad super-merger had begun.

Upon his resignation, Deramus was replaced by Edward T. Reidy. As before, innovations continued to keep the company profitable. Second-generation diesel locomotives such as the EMD GP30 and EMD SD40, the largest and most powerful the CGW ever owned, found their way into the system, and the Oelwein shops stayed busy repairing and maintaining the now-aged F-units long after many other railroads had replaced theirs. Passenger service, reduced to two St. Paul to Omaha trains, was gone by 1962. Labor costs were trimmed, branch lines abandoned, as the Great Western tried to stay fiscally viable enough to be a suitable merger partner.

Upon the failure of a merger offer from the Soo Line Railroad in 1963, the board of the Great Western grew increasingly anxious about its continued viability in a consolidating railroad market. Testifying before the Interstate Commerce Commission in Chicago, President Reidy claimed, "The simple fact is that there is just too much transportation available between the principal cities we serve. The Great Western cannot long survive as an independent carried under these conditions."

The CGW, therefore, was open to a merger bid with the Chicago and North Western Railway (CNW), first proposed in 1964. After a long period of regulatory wrangling, on July 1, 1968, the Chicago Great Western merged with Chicago and North Western. The CNW maintained the facilities at Oelwein for several years, but ultimately abandoned the yard and shops. Within a decade, most of the CGW right-of-way had been abandoned by the CNW.

Chicago Great Western Railway FP7A 116A built by Electro-Motive Division in 1950.

The former Oelwein Shop complex.

Minneapolis & St. Louis flat car 16209 built in 1958.

Chicago Great Western Railway covered hopper 7230 built in 1966.

Chicago Great Western Railway 40 foot boxcar 92105 built in 1945.

Minnesota Transfer S-1 62 built by American Locomotive Company in 1951. Minnesota Transfer Railway Company, a Minnesota Corporation, was a transfer, terminal and industrial switching railroad in the Twin Cities. It was equally owned by nine railroads in the Twin Cities. The Chicago Great Western Railway Co and Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway Company each had a one-ninth interest in the railway. In 1955 the company operated 103 miles of yard tracks and sidings, as well as terminal facilities, in St. Paul, Minneapolis, New Brighton and Fridley. Portions of the trackage still exists today but is now called the Minnesota Commercial Railway.

Chicago Great Western Railway bay window caboose 637 which had been numbered 10536 at some point.

Rock Island wooden caboose 17958 built in 1913.

Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha SW-1 55 built by Electro-Motive Division in 1940 which later became Chicago and North Western 1207 and 616.

A railroad signal display.

The Railway Express Building.

The modern passenger station is now the Oelwein police station and city hall.

The two-story yard office building and the 75 foot dispatcher's tower, which is both the last such tower of the railroad and and the last tower in the State of Iowa. A special thanks to President William Mundt who was there to show us around.

From Oelwein, we drove west on Iowa Highway 281 to Dunkerton and turned left on County Highway C66, which took us to US Highway 63 and back to La Plata. Hungry, we could not find any food along that highway until we reached Oskaloosa, where I enjoyed a KFC dinner and Bob enjoyed a Hardee's dinner then we returned back to La Plata just before 9:00 PM, ending a fantastic day of railfanning in Iowa.