Does anyone have a picture that you can scan and email me of the old round house that used to be on the west side of town? It was a building they turned the engine around in.
Would you have any idea when the roundhouse was torn down?
I found this on a Santa Fe web site:
"West of the depot stood a two stall engine house where lived the Moline Helper." No photos of this "roundhouse" have been found, and it was gone by 1960. The highway turn at that location is still known as the "roundhouse corner."
That web site also has a 1983/88 track layout of the tracks through Moline and the quarry. There is also an interesting 1927 photo view of the tracks which can be enlarged, but I do not see anything that looks like a small roundhouse.
What looks like a single track going out of the picture on the left might just be leading to roundhouse corner assuming that corner was in the vicinity of the Curly Q.
http://www.atsfrr.com/resources/Sandifer/Howard/Moline/Moline.htm
I think roundhouse was in quotes because it only had two stalls.
They actually turned engines on a turntable just outside the entrance to the two stalls.
If there was no turntable, railroaders called it an engine house rather than a roundhouse. In this case they turned the locomotive by moving it to the nearest switch moving it back and forth once through the turned switch.
Prior to the roundhouse being in Moline, it was located in Howard when Howard was end of track. It was moved to Moline when Moline became "end of track" after 1886.
Interesting Waldo, thanks! Lisa, Ruth Walker gave a great program on the Moline railroad a couple of years back to the Musical & Literary Club. She was very well versed, and may be able to give you some info. I think your project is great!
The Shorty Galvan family lived by the round house somewhere around the early 50's. Remember my Dad and I taking some rabbits and fish to them when they lived there.
I have thinking about asking this question for a while now. When I was a wee child, I seem to recall riding the train to Winfield and then taking what I remember to be something similar to a trolley car to Howard. At least I seem to remember it was only one car. We only rode it once or twice. Larryj
What you describe sounds like a doodlebug which was a one car self propelled diesel or gas electric passenger car.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doodlebug_(rail_car)
Let me know if this might be what you recall. I have never heard of them being on the Howard Branch but it would have been ideal for one.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!. Doodlebug! I can now remember my mom and I laughing about the name. Thank you for clearing that up for me. Now, as for the stop in Howard I seem to recall that there was a small station on the west side (southwest side?) maybe close to where the ice house is/was. Any comments on that? Again my thanks. Larryj
In the overall scheme of things, those Doodlebugs could also carry freight and sometimes there was an unpowered Doodlebug trailing behind.
The Howard depot was in that location.
That was the second Howard depot, the first was much larger and burned to the ground around 1907, or so.
When I became aware that a lot of the old train depots were being used elsewhere, I decided to look for the Howard Depot since no one I talked to could remember anything about it. Finally, a fellow that lives in Moline and used to work for Santa Fe with the Howard depot as his duty station said it was unceremoniously torn down.
The Moline depot wound up in Dexter, Ks as part of a private residence.
The Benson Museum has a desk from the old Howard depot and nothing else. I dont believe the Shaffer House in Moline has anything connected to the railroad. I dont recall seeing anything in the Grenola museum either.
The rails into Howard were originally destined to be narrow gauge but someone wised up and it came in as standard gauge arriving in late 1879.
Last time I was in Howard someone really cleaned up around the ice house and locker.
The Doodlebug that went through our small town also carried mail and passengers. It came through from Wichita about 6 in the morning and returned about 6 in the evening. It wasn't a good way to get to Wichita for the day but we had a bus for that.
I
I well remember the Doodlebug but my memory tells me it went from Coffeyville to Wellington. To go to Wichita, you had to get off the train at Winfield and take the bus on to Wichita. Anyone else remember that agenda?
Doodlebugs could have been used anywhere but I found this related to the area for the 1920s.
By the late 1920s, there were 14 passenger trains a day on the Santa Fe stopping in Cherryvale. These had connections at Kansas City, east to Chicago and west to Los Angeles and San Francisco. They also traveled south to Coffeyville and Tulsa, with connections to the Gulf Coast. A doodlebug (motorcar) traveled west out of Cherryvale to Independence, then through Moline to a connection at Winfield to go north to Wichita and Newton, where connections could be made for Kansas City/Chicago or Los Angeles/San Francisco. At this time the Santa Fe had one agent, two clerks, and two telegraph operators on duty at the Cherryvale depot. The depot was open 24 hours a day.
http://www.leatherockhotel.com/railhist.htm
I was not aware that Cherryvale was so rr busy. They apparently had around 4,000 people in the late twenties.
The most famous "Doodlebugs" were the Galloping Gooses on the Rio Grande Southern.
All Lisa wanted was a photo of the Moline roundhouse and all she got was a bunch of doodlers.
;D ;D ;D
We does what we does! :D :D
Waldo, the link to the Moline ATSF page is a typo, or has recently changed. It is now:
http://atsfrr.net/resources/Sandifer/Howard/Moline/Moline.htm (http://atsfrr.net/resources/Sandifer/Howard/Moline/Moline.htm)
I love that page. It is a wealth of information about Moline. It includes links to scans of the Sandborn maps of the areas along the railroad. I wish it had links to the full Sandborn maps of Moline.
The single track on the left in the pictures ended behind the Curly Q, just past the old Elevator. It is called the Webb Spur as it served the large U shaped conglomeration that housed various enterprises associated with the Webbs The existing rock building used by Mills Feed and the Curly Q were the north ends of this origional U-shaped building.
The roundhouse curve is the last curve you go around as you are headed out of Moline going west. The engine house was just east of the highway on the north side of tracks.
Thanks, good information.
After taking another look at the photos, I see now they had the "engine house" marked off in red on that very corner.
There is a distinction between engine house and round house so they must have changed the round house into an engine house at some early point.
Looking at the map there is a huge wye east of town formed with the Howard Branch and that wye would have allowed them to turn locomotives and long trains and they could get along without a round house.
I am assuming LisaT has never found a photo.
Waldo,
In other topics you have posted a lot of names of railroads that were proposed but never built in this area. Where do you get your info? I have done research in the past (at college) but never could find good hard evidence, only second or third hand references to these aborted railroads. Have you found any of this info online, and if you have are you willing to reveal links to it?
Which ones are you referring to?
I have read, that is scanned, most every Elk County newspaper on microfilm from 1871 to 1880.
Some information came from there.
Other information came from two web sites concerning failed railroads.
One of those sites seems to have disappeared, there is one at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_United_States_railroads
I was refering to ones you had written about in a topic about Sedan:
"Santa Fe never made it to Sedan. The editor may be thinking of a proposed extension of the Elk & Chautauqua Railroad. That company was part of the Kansas City, Emporia, and Southern Railroad. Santa Fe leased the entire line, which at the time ended in Howard. The intent was to extend the road south to Sedan and into Indian Territory, but it never happened. The line reached Moline the following year and stopped.
There would never be a "Union depot" i.e., one centrally placed railway station jointly owned and used by two or more rival railroads. Other railroads slated for a Sedan connection also did not make it. These were the Moline and Sedan Railway; Wichita, Douglass, and Sedan Railway; and the Grenola, Sedan, and Elgin Railroad. These roads did not live past incorporation papers."
The extension from Moline to Sedan I was aware of, but this is the first I've ever heard of the WD&S and the GS&E.
OK, you've definitely piqued my interest again in railroads in and around Elk County. Would the following list happen to be the one you think moved:
http://www.franklincountykansas.net/indexes/railroad/town%20names%20in%20incorporated%20railroad%20names.html (http://www.franklincountykansas.net/indexes/railroad/town%20names%20in%20incorporated%20railroad%20names.html)
It contains some intersting ones, like:
Kansas City, Elk Falls and El Paso Railroad Company
Coffeyville, Independence, Elk Falls and Northwestern Railroad Co
Fall River, Howard and Western Railroad Company
Fredonia, Howard and Southwestern Railroad Company
Fort Smith, Howard and Northwestern Railroad Company
That was it. I book marked it.
It has the incorporation dates.
The Kansas City, Lawrence, and Southern RR ran east to west across Elk County. Several lines operated until Santa Fe became the owner.
Another local RR was the Chicago, Kansas, & Western running via Fredonia that came through Upola to Longton.
I came across a map that had an RR line from Howard to Western Park.
It seems that some map companies printed maps of proposed but not yet built RRs.
It was probably meant to be the Fall River, Howard, and Western or the Fredonia, Howard, and Southwestern.
I have never been able to find that map again
Another item,
Grenola also had a turntable. A turntable usually goes with a round house.
But, apparently, Grenola did not have a round house or an engine house.
A rail map is in The Official State Atlas of Kansas, printed in 1887.
The turntable was a couple blocks east from the grain elevator.
Another of those phantom railroads shows up on the Butler Co. map in the 1887 Atlas, the Fort Smith, Eldorado and Northwestern. Map shows it as proposed coming straight east out of Latham to the Elk County Line, headed straight at the Green Ranch Hill (aka Mt.Jesus).
I found a map with a railroad from Howard to Western Park, along with alot of other phantoms:
http://specialcollections.wichita.edu/collections/maps/detailsframes.asp?var=1880-0003 (http://specialcollections.wichita.edu/collections/maps/detailsframes.asp?var=1880-0003)