Midwest Old Threshers: Midwest Central Railroad & Midwest Electric Railway Trip 6/18/2012

by Chris Guenzler

I arose at 5:00 AM and had my doughnuts before making the corrections to the Trip to Cedar Rapids story. I then walked over to the Clarion Inn for the safety meeting, learning that I would be the solo bus host on Bus 2 today Once all the buses were completely full, we left Cedar Rapids for Mount Pleasant and arrived at the Midwest Old Threshers.

Midwest Old Threshers

The map of the Midwest Old Threshers Grounds in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.

A Brief History

The operation known as Midwest Old Threshers is located in Mount Pleasant, a community of approximately 9,000 located in the heart of southeast Iowa. While small, every Labor Day weekend, Mount Pleasant hosts more than 100,000 visitors during the annual Old Threshers reunion. The Old Threshers Reunion dates back to 1950 and pays tribute to the agricultural heritage of the region. It includes interactive, live-action exhibition-style displays centering on restored mechanical equipment, particularly steam engines, farm tractors, stationary gas engines, antique and classic cars, the narrow-gauge Midwest Central Railroad and electric trolleys. Besides the action, there are numerous country music shows, a huge campground and lots of food. The Heritage Museum is open year-round and features a variety of exhibits that celebrate the rural heritage of the Midwest. For the steam fan, the stationary steam engine exhibit features three large Corliss engines as well as a number of smaller engines. The Midwest Central Railroad and the Midwest Electric Railway both operate on this property.

In 1959, a railroad was added to the site when a group of Midwest Old Threshers board members purchased a Davenport 0-4-0 and a depot from Hillsboro, Iowa. The following year, the organization attended the Argent Lumber Company auction in Hardeeville, South Carolina. There they acquired an 1891 2-6-0 Baldwin Locomotive, former Surry Sussex and South Hampton Railroad 6 of Virginia. They also acquired a 1906, 2-6-0 Baldwin locomotive. Numbered 2, this was former New Berlin and Winfield Railroad of Pennsylvania. The railroad also added a Model T motor car, a four man pump car and a section car. A full circle track around McMillan Park, approximately a mile-and-a-quarter, was built in less than two years. By 1966, the railroad had added a caboose and several coaches built from scratch. A water tower from the Bevier and Southern Railroad in Missouri was moved and reassembled east of the roundhouse. A small trestle bridge was built from scratch by a group of Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad volunteers on their evenings off.

In 1966, the railroad acquired West Side Lumber Shay 9, now leased to the Georgetown Loop. In 1982, the Midwest Central Railroad obtained 16, a 1951 Henschel, built in Kassel, West Germany, that was sitting as scrap for 20 years in a Detroit rail yard. The MCRR has owned and sold various other locomotives in its history. These include an 1897 outside frame 2-8-0 engine 1,originally brought up from Mexico, and 12, a 2-6-2 Prairie engine built by Baldwin and originating in Hawaii.

The Midwest Electric Railway Museum also operates on the grounds of the Midwest Old Threshers Reunion. During the event, it provides transportation on a loop around the RV campground. The loop is reportedly 1.75 miles long, with some sources saying 2.5 miles. The electric line is managed by Old Threshers, using volunteers for most of the operations. Its fleet includes several Iowa cars. This includes Car 9, a wooden combination passenger and freight car built in 1909 for the Albia Interurban Railway. This line became one of the last electric interurban lines in Iowa, the Southern Iowa Railway, which survived as a freight carrier until 1967. A second Iowa car was built in 1930 by Perley Thomas for Knoxville, Tennessee. It later became Waterloo, Cedar Falls & Northern Railway 381, and was the last streetcar to run in public service in Iowa (1958). The collection also includes Car 1100, a motorized flat car from the electric railroad that once ran on the Keokuk Dam on the Mississippi River, and former Chicago, Aurora & Elgin 320, a wooden interurban coach was built in 1914 by the Jewett Car Company. Filling out the collection are two open-bench cars built in 1911 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a 1927 "Peter Witt" type car from Milan, Italy, and former MBTA line car 3279.

Our NRHS Visit

I started my visit by exploring the railroad shop.

Motorcar 11 was built by West Side Lumber Company and was used as a fire-car and section car. "Jitney" No. 11 (in West Side terms) utilizes a 1929 Ford Model A engine, transmission and rear end, though essentially everything else is scratch-built. It was purchased by us along with West Side Lumber Company Shay 9 and several log car trucks in 1966.

Midwest Central Railroad model MDT D-9, nee Carbon Limestone Company in Hillsville, Pennsylvania built by Plymouth in 1956. In November 1983, Service Machine Equipment purchased Carbon Limestone's operation and due to their unfavorable opinion on railroads, the fleet of diesels were left largely abandoned. This and another were found by Midwest Central Railroad volunteers in the early 1990's and were subsequently purchased.

Originally operating on 38" gauge track (instead of the typical 36"), the two were re-gauged in the MCRR shops. The 14 quickly entered service after its arrival but D-9 was left untouched for several years and it was not until 2009 that D-9's restoration began.

I then went outside.

Midwest Central Railroad model MDT D-14, nee Carbon Limestone Company in Hillsville, Pennsylvania built by Plymouth in 1956. In November 1983, Service Machine Equipment purchased Carbon Limestone's operation and due to their unfavorable opinion on railroads, the fleet of diesels were left largely abandoned. This and another were found by Midwest Central Railroad volunteers in the early 1990's and were subsequently purchased.

Originally operating on 38" gauge track (instead of the typical 36"), the two were re-gauged in the MCRR shops. The 14 quickly entered service after its arrival.

Engine 14 and the shop building.

Outside the car shop was a freight train.

Midwest Central gas mechanical narrow gauge engine MW-101 was built by the Vulcan Iron Works in 1935 for the Frederick Snare Corporation of New York. It is one of five identical engines built for the construction of the Tygart River Dam in Taylor County West Virginia. Upon the completion of the Dam in 1938, it is believed that all five engines were sold to a scrap yard in Philadelphia. In February 1967, one of the museum's members ran across an ad in "Rock & Dirt" by Harry B. Reiter Company, listing four of the five engines for sale. In April 1967 the Midwest Central Railroad purchased two of them for $3,000.00. Engine number 2 was quickly worked over and put into service as a switch engine. At that time the engine was painted yellow, and lettered MCRR MW-101.

Denver and Rio Grande Western box car 3366 built by American Car and Foundry in 1904.

Denver and Rio Grande Western flat car 6216 built by the railroad in 1918.

Bellevue and Cascade caboose 055 is a genuine Iowa narrow gauge car built by the Ohio Falls Car Company around 1880. It served on the Bellevue and Cascade in northeast Iowa until the line closed around 1936. It was their only caboose. After the B&C shut down, one of its engineers bought the caboose and kept it on his property as storage. It sat outside rotting away for decades before being moved to Maquoketa in the 1960s. By this time its condition was very bad.

Around 1980, Jim Schroeder of Bellevue, Iowa purchased what was left of the car and got to work on what became a very impressive restoration. He meticulously replaced all of the rotten wood, creating an exact copy of each piece. He reused what hardware he could but nearly all of the wood is new. When finished, he used the car as a guesthouse when the Schroeder's would entertain guests. In 2004, after talks with the Schroeder family, arraignments were made to move the caboose to Mount Pleasant to be used on the Midwest Central Railroad with the Schroeder family maintaining ownership. Once here, the under carriage was completed so that it could be used in operations.

Our steam train to ride and photograph today has steam engine Surry, Sussex & South Hampton Railway 2-6-0 6 was built by Baldwin in 1891. The railway was named after the three counties in which it operated in Virginia.

Originally, the 6 was built as a wood burner with a straight stack, extended smokebox, box-style kerosene headlight and a vertical stave pilot. In 1898, it was converted to burn coal. In 1903, the original headlight was replaced with a 2" smaller box headlight. The headlight was again replaced in 1913, but this time with a round case, however, the size remained the same. Sometime before 1914, the original Baldwin straight capped stack was replaced with a venturi-shaped cast stack and the plate pilot wheel replaced with a spoked pilot wheel. Sometime after 1914, the 6 received many modifications such as Southern Valve Gear (replacing the factory Stephenson Valve Gear), a Pyle-National electrical system, a rear sand-box, a new tender tank, a new smokebox and a switchyard style pilot.

The engine was retired in 1925 when traffic declined at the SS&S. Shortly after the sale, it was purchased back by Baldwin then re-sold on January 11th, 1936 to the Argent Lumber Company in South Carolina where it went back to burning wood. Here, the 6 would operate alongside two of what would become the Midwest Central's other locomotives: the 2 and the 1, until 1956. At Argent Lumber, it gained an iron cab and Rushton stack. Various other small details were arranged at Argent's convenience as well, such as the relocation and replacement of the dynamo. In 1955, it suffered a crown-sheet failure that killed the engine crew, but was soon rebuilt.

In 1960, the 6 was purchased by the Midwest Central Railroad along with the 2. It was the first locomotive to operate on the MCRR and was the main engine until 1971 when it was taken out of service for major repairs. The 6 returned to service in 1988, with a new boiler and conversion to oil fire and was out of service from 2008 until 2010 for flue and firebox-stay repairs when it was rebuilt.

I now set up for the first runby along the west side of the loop.

The first photo runby along the north fence of the steam loop. I moved to my next photo location.

Next the train stopped and performed blow down at the northwest corner of the grounds. Here Keith Schmidt joined me and would photograph with me until we rode the train.

Now the train started up and ran by us.

We then walked to the northeast corner of the loop for my next runby.

My photo runby. We moved over to the little trestle for the next set of pictures.

The train crossed the little trestle. Bart Jennings, convention chairman, is standing by the conductor on the platform. We next moved along the east side of the loop.

The train along the south side of the loop. We then moved to the southeast corner of the loop.

The semaphore signals changed before our eyes.

The train at the southeast corner of the grounds, after which we walked over to ride the train but there was one more picture to take.

White Pass and Yukon caboose 903 built by the railroad to replace the original wooden 903. It was purchased by Jim Machacek of Northfield, Minnesota and shipped to the Midwest Central Railroad in 1990. On September 5, 1998, Jim sent a letter of intent to donate the caboose to the Midwest Central Railroad and on December 7, 1998, the donation was made official and ownership of the caboose was transferred to the Midwest Central Railroad.

Next Keith and I took a ride on this steam train, so enjoy these views.

You have now made the loop with me around the steam loop on the Midwest Central Railroad. Now for a few more photo runbys.

Here are two views of our engine at the Midwest south station.

The engine and train ready for another trip. I moved to the southwest corner of the loop.

These two pieces of equipment came out onto the loop.

Motorcar 25 was built by the Surry, Sussex, and Southampton Railway/Surry Lumber Company in 1925 out of a 1925 Ford Model T phaeton and castings from the nearby Berkley Machine Works. S.S.&S. had a fleet of these converted Model T phaetons and were all of the 600-numbering series. This numbering series was borrowed from the Norfolk & Western Railroad's 600-series 4-4-2 locomotives. We are not certain which number in that series 25 was originally given by S.S.&S. However, due to its age, it is likely the last one built and therefore is likely 602 or 603.

These motorcars were used as section cars, for personal transport, for Sunday outings to the Scotland Wharf, and even for hauling ice. Sometime in 25's life (most likely at S.S.&S.), the phaeton body was removed (sans cowl) and a wooden passenger body was built. While the original color of the wooden body has not yet been discovered, it is clear that it was painted silver before arriving at Midwest Central Railroad in 1960. At an unknown date, 25 was sold to Argent Lumber Company and was included in the purchase of Argent Nos. 2 & 6. It was assigned a spot number (25) by Midwest Central before the original numbering series was known.