Nostalgia & History > Special image for 'route56' Richie!

There is such a feeling of reward & fulfillment that is realized when being a member of this great website. The sharing of images, information and that special common nostalgia for history that all railfans experience rises up “off the chart” here on TO. And if said railfan has no dependents (as I don’t), virtually unlimited free time (as I do) and a deep love for that special facet of history (pick me), coupled with ready access to photo collections of several friends & contacts there is no end to the things that can be happily composed for public consumption.

Back in 2011 I finally caved in to my long time friend, Bob Helling’s energetic & months-long recruitment efforts to bring me aboard TO.com. It wasn’t long before I was exclaiming “what took me so long???” Through my membership in TO I have made numerous friends and many dozens of contacts I never would have made any other way. And I’ve wholly (re)embraced the sharing aspect of this wonderful hobby we call railfanning. Personally, I learned from no less than gentlemen like Bill Gibson & Lloyd Stagner that railfanning does nobody any good, unless it is shared among other like-minded fans. And that hypothesis is deeply in play right now with with Bill’s son Art so freely & graciously allowing images from the Gibson Collection to be posted in the hundreds of threads he & I have collaborated on.

With all that as an underlying theme I am pleased to post an image here for a special TO member I have come to know in the past few years. It comes from the collection of another TO member I have also come to know in the past few hears. TO member Richie Kennedy lives in McLouth, KS but is way too young to have seen any railroad activity in his home town. But because of information gleaned from fellow railfans he knows some of its RR history. And with a smile I get to add to his knowledge with this basic raw image. All I did was straighten & crop so as to leave a white border.

Now I’m going to make my friend Richie a carrot-on-a-stick type offer: I’ve taken this image into Photoshop to further crop it and have already spent almost an hour just cleaning up the sky. This special project will likely take at least another couple of hours to complete, which I plan to spend watching the K-State ~ Iowa State football game this afternoon. All Richie has to do is help me root FOR K-State and I will post my finished result. Whatcha think there my friend? Are you up to the challenge… :^)

1. KCNW depot at McLouth, KS circa 1916. I believe this is former “Kansas City, Wyandotte & Northwestern” trackage. And it is future Missouri Pacific trackage that will ultimately be abandoned and torn out. The train shown here is most likely eastbound* with lots of interesting activity at the depot.
Photographer unknown, from the Jim Will collection

*As always, all info here is cheerfully open to correction and/or discussion

Thanks for looking back!
Lance Garrels (santafe199)
with a lot of help from
Jim Will (KCRW287)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/23 02:22 by santafe199.

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History at its best.
Bob

Lance, the McLouth station did alot of business for the KCNW, I have seen numbers of the amount of freight that went thru here it was a lot. Just to think that this road would be in its final life stages in 1918 and done running every day service with some attempts to keep the wheels rolling, with all service done in 1920. KCNW got torn out about 1924.  I added another forgotten depot of the L&T that went thru McLouth, the L&T, the pawn of the ATSF & UP. It got torn out in 1935.

  Howard  Killam photo, Jim Will collection

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I wonder if "Virginia" on the depot sign refers to Virginia, NE....119 miles could be about right.  Anyone have thoughts?

Yes, probably back then about 8 more hours to get there. KCRW287

twjurgens Wrote: > ...  I wonder if "Virginia" ... refers to Virginia, NE ...

I think you're on the right track, pun fully intended. But in a phone chat with Jim, it seems the KCNW ran out of fizz at Seneca, KS and  original construction never made it into Nebraska...

Willie W

Thanks!  That made sense to me, which doesn't always mean much!  :)

twjurgens Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I wonder if "Virginia" on the depot sign refers to
> Virginia, NE....119 miles could be about right. 
> Anyone have thoughts?

KCWNW reached Virginia in December, 1889 and ran over the RI to Beatrice.  That didn't last long though.

santafe199 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> twjurgens Wrote: > ...  I wonder if "Virginia"
> ... refers to Virginia, NE ...
>
> I think you're on the right track, pun fully
> intended. But in a phone chat with Jim, it seems
> the KCNW ran out of fizz at Seneca, KS and 
> original construction never made it into
> Nebraska...
>
> Willie W

twjurgens Wrote: > ... KCWNW reached Virginia in December, 1889 and ran over the RI to Beatrice ...

And I should have remembered that. I'm getting myself completely out of kilter here. I misunderstood Jim while talking with him about the 2 depot(s) at Axtell, just a few miles WNW of Seneca. I knew the KCNW reached Virginia after posting these Bill Gibson photos: ( https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,5130458,5130458#msg-5130458 ). I think I was more interested in finding out what part(s) of town the UP & KCNW depots were in at Axtell. Ditto for the L&T and the KCNW depots at McLouth. And I know the CRI&P ran thru Sabetha via their Horton, KS ~ Beatrice, NE branch, so the ghost of that branch line is also lurking somewhere "in the neighborhood"...

Although I do love the history, I've never really professed to being a good historian! Put me behind a camera where I belong, and I'm much more confortable... ;^)

Willie W

 

Lance, I think we got our wires crossed. The KCNW went into Beatrice, pulled back after their first bankruptcy to Virginia. MOP to control in about 1894, in about 1914 MOP let them go, with in a couple of years the KCNW was having a hard time to keep everything together. The last couple of years they had very sporatic service, with hardly any north of Seneca. The final train was a couple of years before it was scrapped aropund 1918., the bond holders were listening to offers, but no help from the USRA or banks. my  desktop just went bad order, i cannot get to my files to double check the mentioned dates. kcrw287

Here's a page from the MOP entry in the Guide (Official Guide) for January 1910. 

In the left schedule page; KCMO-Axtell, McLouth is shown 44.0 miles from K.C.. Subtracting
that 44 miles from the final mileage at Virginia, NE, (column on right side of page), 163.2,  I come up
with a difference of 119.2 which fits very nicely with what we see painted on the depot photo. 
(Duh..just noticed while rereading; the mileage from each end of the line was shown in this timetable...different)
I wonder what was painted on the depot ahead of the name McLouth, maybe mileage to KC? 

As to Jim's speculation regarding running times, we can see that both 503-504 required right about 8 hours
for the entire route KC-Virginia. 

Charlie

 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/20 14:29 by cewherry.

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cewherry Wrote: > ... Official Guide for January 1910 ...

Utterly fascinating! I'm looking at the route and half the names no longer exist -no doubt swallowed up by urban sprawl, or merged into surrounding areas. The towns I HAVE been in certainly don't show they've ever had RR's running through them. And some of them I've even searched for clues. Of course, I probably don't know what to look for...

Lance/199

This nice old Wm Westlake brass top lantern from the 1880's is unmarked, but carries a nice clear cast KCW&N RR globe. Found the globe at a shop in Topeka decades ago, $8 bucks if I remember.

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Lance and Jim

Thanks so much for this post.  This is the best McLouth photo I have seen.  Since my mother's side of the family were all from McLouth, I may even have relatives at the depot!

And Lance, I hope K-State didn't spoil your day yesterday?

Again, thanks for the quality post and nice work in Photo Shop.

Jeff N

sfn2633 Wrote: > ... I hope K-State didn't spoil your day yesterday? ...

Yikes! I really didn't think we had much of a chance to win it, especiall AT Ames. But I sure didn't expect to get buskwhacked like that... :^/

BTW: Jeff, the image version you see in this thread has only a minimum of photo-editing. I've got the final version ready to post, probably tomorrow...

Lance