ADVENTURES
IN KEOKUK
By Jim Dierks
[This fall is the 25th anniversary of the arrival of cars 161 and 168 at NYMT. This epochal event, which set NYMT firmly on the path to operating trolley cars on its rail line, is told to us by Jim Dierks, who spearheaded this acquisition. Ed.]
In the summer of 1996, the body repairs and superb paint job on Rochester and Eastern car 157 resulted in a fine exhibit for our visitors, but that accomplishment was already two years old. The dream of restoring the car to operation on the museum rail line was still alive, and many of the detail tasks that were needed were ongoing, but that going was agonizingly slow. The question finally occurred to me that there might be a working car somewhere in the trolley museum community that we could obtain and thereby speed up the timeline toward trolley rides at NYMT.
I put in a call to Scott Becker who had been (and still is) a leader in the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum and was also a key figure in the Association of Railway Museums. I thought he might know of something available through the Association, and in fact he already knew of several cars that were for sale. He was particularly enthusiastic about them as they were "Strafford Cars" retired from the Philadelphia and Western Railroad, cars he held a special affection for. Oddly, these cars were in Iowa as part of a defunct tourist operation and they definitely were available.
After some preliminary fact finding, I set off for Keokuk, located in that small triangle of southeast Iowa that is defined by the Mississippi and Des Moines Rivers. There, I found two large traction orange interurban cars resting beside the Mississippi on track of the Keokuk Junction Railway. My contact was Rich Taylor, recently the General Manager of the KJ which had been taken over in March by a small railroad holding company, Pioneer RailCorp. He provided a lot of information and encouragement, and suggested I look for someone named Fred Perry in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa where Fred was preparing the trolley cars for parking lot shuttle duty at the annual Thresher Festival.
After I found Fred there and described my mission, he encouraged me to take ownership of the cars and enthusiastically offered to help prepare them for shipment to Rochester. He explained that Mr. Taylor had been with Chicago Transit Authority and was a traction enthusiast. It was Taylor's idea to obtain several retired P&W cars and overhaul them for tourist duty. Fred was working in construction of the St. Louis light rail system, just down river from Keokuk, so he did the work on the cars.
Cars
161 and 168 required a lot of preparation before they could be
moved. The roof of car 161 was in particularly bad condition and
leaked profusely. Here, Rick Holahan is securing a large tarp on car
161 to avoid further damage during the trip. [Jim Dierks photo]
The KJ was not an electric railroad, so the project included obtaining a truck from a scrapped CTA car and mounting a generator on it that could be wired into the P&W cars for operation on the line. Even though this sounds a little like a guy mounting an electric fan to blow on the sail of his boat, the concept actually worked well and folks came from miles around to "ride the trolley" from Keokuk, across the Mississippi and into Illinois. Unfortunately, Pioneer RailCorp wasn't interested in running a tourist trolley line so after their takeover of the KJ, they shut things down.
I took measurements and assessed the condition of the cars, as if I knew what I was doing, and flew back to Rochester pondering the next step. That involved several phone calls to an executive of Pioneer RailCorp in Peoria asking all sorts of questions including the all-important asking price for the one car I thought I wanted. On the third or fourth call, the exasperated CEO told me that if I'd stop asking questions, he'd let me have both cars for the price he was asking for one car! I didn't know I was such a sharp negotiator. I took the deal and immediately laid plans to return to Keokuk to have the cars shipped to NYMT.
Just about an hour south of Rochester is Silk Road Transport, a company that specializes in hauling rail equipment on long, especially outfitted semi-trailers. In fact, we had used them a month earlier to transport Northern Texas Traction Company car 409 from the Spaghetti Warehouse Restaurant to NYMT. I soon had Silk Road scheduled for a pickup in early November.
With fellow NYMT volunteer Rick Holahan riding shotgun, I drove straight through to Keokuk, meeting up with Fred Perry there. Our first day, October 31, was mostly spent "waiting for papers" officially giving us ownership and permission to be on the property. Once work finally began, my indoctrination into moving trolley cars started with removing the trolley boards-wooden walkways along the length of the roofs of the carsfor which I had brought cordless drills, screw drivers and even a brace and bit. Fred found me laboriously struggling at the first of what would probably be hundreds of screws holding the boards in place. He said, "That's not the way we do it!" and proceeded to grab one end of a board and rip it right out of the roof, cleats and all! If we were ever going to get the cars ready in the short time we had, that was how we'd have to work.
Rick
Holahan is seen here securing the roof tarp on car 168. The bridge
over the Mississippi River is seen in the background; the Burlington
Norther track is at right. [Jim Dierks photo]
That night was Halloween, and I feared that all our activity during the day might have brought unwanted attention to the big orange "pumpkins" down by the river. I spent a restless night imagining smashed windows, rotten eggs and wads of toilet paper greeting us in the morning. But all was well as dawn broke on a chilly November 1 and we got right back to work.
With trolley boards, cleats, poles, ventilators, and other things removed, the cars were now (probably) ready to clear any underpasses on the way back to NYMT. Memories of the rest of the prep work is a blur as Fred, Rick and I hustled through our tasks over the next two days, all the time soaking up what Fred could tell us about the work he did on the cars and his current job in St. Louis. Video shot by Rick reminds me of all the small details we attended to, including tying down a massive tarp on 161s decomposing roof in case of rain (and to keep more of the roof from flying off during the journey).
Railfans take note: the video records the passing of Burlington Northerns short-lived "TroughTrain". There was also abundant barge activity at nearby Lock and Dam No. 19 on the Mississippi to capture on video. The lock gets around a large power dam built in 1913 to provide electricity for St. Louis, including, appropriately, the St. Louis Street Railway Company.
The
two photos above show the Strafford car train underway on the trip
across the Mississippi River on November 3, 1996 to the quarry where
the cars could be loaded onto the Silk Road trailer. [Jim Dierks
photos]
Prep work on the cars was concluded in dwindling daylight on Saturday, November 2. To celebrate, and to thank Fred and Rick for their efforts, Mr. Magnanimous decided to treat them to dinner, and Fred knew just the place in town. I remember wondering why he ordered the pork chop, while I was primed to let him have the most expensive steak on the menu. As usual, Fred knew what he was doing. He had spent many days here in Keokuk working on the cars. The "pork chop" was a tribute to Iowa's hog industry and was about 5 inches thick! If I hadn't already decided to heed everything Fred told us, I did then.
Dawn broke clear and cold on Sunday morning, November 3, and the intrepid trio returned to the cars at 6:30 in time to meet Keokuk Junction's GP8 diesel 469 and crew for the short trip to the loading area. The Tomlinson couplers on the P&W cars didn't mate with the standard railroad coupler on the Geep, so it was Fred to the rescue again, hauling his acetylene torch from its normal storage location (the passenger seat of his VW), and cutting a large hole in a joint bar to serve as a link to the diesel's knuckle pin. Problem solved.
The short trip was an interstate move, across a massive swing bridge and onto a large area of crushed stone which handily was all at rail top level. This was the property of Gray Quarries and the folks there had not only allowed me to use their place for loading the cars, but had delivered and spread that crushed stone at no cost!
With Rick shooting video aboard the diesel, I drove over to the quarry site to monitor the arrival there, offering a wave to the Silk Road driver I spotted waiting for us on the highway shoulder. The cars were pushed carefully into the quarry loading area and we thanked the KJ crew for their good work. Silk Road driver John Sausville lined up his rig with the tracks and the four of us wrestled a steel ramp into place that connected the tracks with the two rails in the trailer bed. Soon the first car, 168, was winched up onto the trailer and secured for the trip. John had just come all the way from New York State and was eager to get home, so he took off. Rick and I bid Fred goodbye and began our trip back to Rochester too.
Car
168 is loaded onto the Silk Road trailer and ready to begin its long
trip to New York State. From left to right are Jim Dierks, Rick
Holahan, Fred Perry and John Sausville. [Jim Dierks collection]
There's much more to the story, of course. To get the cars to NYMT, they had to be unloaded at Industry Depot yard, and a host of members from Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum jumped in to help with that massive effort and to haul the cars up our shared rail line to the museum. Their help was invaluable! In fact, on reflection, I'm mindful that so many things seemed to "fall into place" but were often supported by the generosity of many people involved. Scott shared his knowledge of the cars; Rich Taylor and his wife were generous hosts and helped a lot in Keokuk; Fred and Rick were two without whose efforts the project couldn't have succeeded; the KJ generously mustered a Sunday morning crew; a quarry with no reason to help went beyond the call; Silk Roads driver and management handled everything easily and professionally, giving me the confidence that the 860-mile trip for the cars would go smoothly and safely.
Most of all, the arrival of the cars energized the long-held dream of operating trolleys at the museum, with Charlie Lowe, Ted Strang, Rand Warner, Dick Holbert, Jim Johnson, Charlie Harshbarger, Scott Gleason and so many others rising to the occasion, planting poles, stringing wire, constructing a substation, and eventually creating a unique experience for our museum visitors: the only vintage trolley operation in New York State.
