Nostalgia & History > Last train on the ATSF Railway Alma branch line

Here's a photo from the Kansas State Historical Society files that reportedly shows the power on the last train to operate on the former ATSF Railway Alma Branch line between Alma and Burlingame in 1972.

Does anyone have an exact date for that last run? Anybody have a picture showing the final eastbound train's full car consist? The accompanying photo was taken at Harveyville, a few miles west of Burlingame. Does anyone know whether or not the Harveyville depot was later destroyed or moved off of its original site?

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I am looking forward to the answer here. My sister-in-law and her husband live in Harveyville. His mother tells me they called the local "Ol' Molly." You can still see the ROW going west out of town. Thanks for posting.
later...Wes

Wes Chiles
Topeka, KS

The depot from Harveyville is gone. wag216

Were you there, JM ? wag216

There was an article about someone modeling this branch in HO. I believe it was in Model RR magazine in the last couple of years. Looked like it will be a neat layout.

Mike

I heard the nickname for the local was "Polly." This is another fact that needs clarification.

"Polly" is the name that was used by the railfans. "Polly" was short for Pollywog. wag216 (I rode Polly many times. 1943 to 1961.)
Stay tuned! Brother Garrels is working on a large story, mit fotos.

You guy'a were right and I was wrong. It is Ol' Polly. But for the love of Pete, don't tell the wife I admitted to that!
later...Wes

Wes Chiles
Topeka, KS

In the last year or so before the last run, the Alma Branch was served by the Topeka Local that ran between Emporia and Topeka, and I believe the local went to Alma one or two days a week. I was up there the day they were supposed to run, but they never showed, so looking forward to WAG 216's photo's.

That sounds like Jared Harper's layout. Jared's pretty active on the Yahoo Proto-Layouts list - https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Proto-Layouts/info . He does really nice work.

unclebob Wrote:
> There was an article about someone modeling this branch in HO. I believe it was in Model RR
> magazine in the last couple of years. Looked like it will be a neat layout.
>
> Mike

Joe Atkinson
Council Bluffs, IA
www.iaisrailfans.org/../Sub4WestEnd

I just ran across this thread and realized that I must have been on the last "train " on the Alma Branch. I was a student fireman in 1960. One of my first trips was on a job to go from Argentine to Burlingame, and up the Alma Branch to  look for and pick up any remaining rolling stock still left abandoned. Alas, as a student fireman I was not keeping a log book yet, so I don't have an exact date but it would have been late spring 1960. We had one F3 unit and dropped the waycar off in Burlingame. With the rear end crew plus a student fireman the cab, it was a little crowded. The track was so overgrown with weeds that in most cases a brakeman had to walk ahead of the engine to make sure the railroad was still there. A brakeman and the conductor were at each side door watching for over hanging tree limbs. We had a speed restriction of 10 mph, but that was rarely a factor, we were at walking speed most of the time. . The bridge was out at Hessdale so we didn"t go any further than Eskridge. I've often wondered why the rairoad didn't assign an engine with better visibility front and rear than an F3. As I recall we did not find anything that we could take back with us. We backed up to Burlingame,  picked up our waycar and returned to Argentine just barely under  the 16 hour limit. This had to have been the last run up the branch because there was not much "railroad" left when we were there and there wasn't anything left to pick up. As an aside wag216 and I rode this train many times in the early '50s behind a 2-6-2.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/06/19 16:42 by TallowPot.