|
|
|
Preserving the past for future generations is a never-ending process at the Carona Railroad Site.
“We’re adding a little bit here all the time,” said Larry Spahn, Weir, of the Heart of the Heartlands club. The group is dedicated to passing on the rich railroading heritage of southeast Kansas.
The site, including outdoor exhibits and the Web Family Museum and Educational Center, will be open free to the public from 1 to 5 p.m. today.
This will be the last scheduled open house of the season, but many more activities are planned.
“We’re going to be pretty busy,” Spahn said. “We’ve got Little Balkans Days train rides coming up Aug. 30 and 31, and in September we’ll have the MOKAN Boy Scouts coming here to work on their railroad merit badge. That’s kind of a hard one for them to earn, because there aren’t very many places where they can work on it. We’re also going to have the Chanute Artist Alley rides on Sept. 27, the Fredonia Homecoming on Oct. 4, and Pumpkin Patch rides on Oct. 11 and 12.”
More items keep coming in for display at the museum, he said, including books for the large railroad reference library.
“Jim Carter came in for his College High School reunion and asked us if we were interested in his collection of railroad books,” Spahn said. “He sent boxes and boxes. A gentleman named Herman Page has given us a lot of Santa Fe Railroad material.”
Work also continues on improving the site.
“We’re trying to get water put in closer to the train tracks, so we can work on our passenger cars,” Spahn said. “We’re also working on getting electricity to the Boston Depot, which was never wired for electricity.”
That depot is one of the newer major additions to the site, which already featured the restored Carona Depot.
“We didn’t learn our lesson from the Carona Depot — we decided to get another depot,” said Ron Morgan, Heart of the Heartlands member. “We had to move the Carona Depot less than a mile, but the Boston Depot had to be brought something like 42 miles by the house movers.”
He said that Boston, Mo., was located six miles north of Jasper, Mo., and five miles south of Lamar, Mo.
“The town was originally named Beloit, Mo., but when they got a post office, they had to change the name because there was already another Beloit, Mo.,” Morgan said.
The depot was built about 1882, and went out of service in 1937, when it was sold to an area farmer.
“It was pretty typical of the railroads to sell the depots to a local farmer for $50,” Morgan said.
“The farmer had sheep and they’d crowd under the depot in the winter,” Spahn said. “Every year five or six of them would smother.”
The Boston Depot was not in good shape.
“It’s had a lot of weathering, and it was definitely in need of tender, loving care,” Morgan said.
A construction class helped Heart of the Heartlands restore the depot.
“The kids, most of them high school kids from Columbus, were great,” Morgan said. “We’d ask them to do something, and they did it, so we’d ask them to do something else, and they’d do that, too. If it had just been up to us, I don’t think it would have gotten done.”
The site also includes two maintenance of way motor car sheds, five cabooses and railroad signals. It is located two miles west of Scammon on Kansas Highway 102 and 1/4 mile west.
Preserving the past for future generations is a never-ending process at the Carona Railroad Site.
“We’re adding a little bit here all the time,” said Larry Spahn, Weir, of the Heart of the Heartlands club. The group is dedicated to passing on the rich railroading heritage of southeast Kansas.
The site, including outdoor exhibits and the Web Family Museum and Educational Center, will be open free to the public from 1 to 5 p.m. today.
This will be the last scheduled open house of the season, but many more activities are planned.
“We’re going to be pretty busy,” Spahn said. “We’ve got Little Balkans Days train rides coming up Aug. 30 and 31, and in September we’ll have the MOKAN Boy Scouts coming here to work on their railroad merit badge. That’s kind of a hard one for them to earn, because there aren’t very many places where they can work on it. We’re also going to have the Chanute Artist Alley rides on Sept. 27, the Fredonia Homecoming on Oct. 4, and Pumpkin Patch rides on Oct. 11 and 12.”
More items keep coming in for display at the museum, he said, including books for the large railroad reference library.
“Jim Carter came in for his College High School reunion and asked us if we were interested in his collection of railroad books,” Spahn said. “He sent boxes and boxes. A gentleman named Herman Page has given us a lot of Santa Fe Railroad material.”
Work also continues on improving the site.
“We’re trying to get water put in closer to the train tracks, so we can work on our passenger cars,” Spahn said. “We’re also working on getting electricity to the Boston Depot, which was never wired for electricity.”
That depot is one of the newer major additions to the site, which already featured the restored Carona Depot.
“We didn’t learn our lesson from the Carona Depot — we decided to get another depot,” said Ron Morgan, Heart of the Heartlands member. “We had to move the Carona Depot less than a mile, but the Boston Depot had to be brought something like 42 miles by the house movers.”
He said that Boston, Mo., was located six miles north of Jasper, Mo., and five miles south of Lamar, Mo.
“The town was originally named Beloit, Mo., but when they got a post office, they had to change the name because there was already another Beloit, Mo.,” Morgan said.
The depot was built about 1882, and went out of service in 1937, when it was sold to an area farmer.
“It was pretty typical of the railroads to sell the depots to a local farmer for $50,” Morgan said.
“The farmer had sheep and they’d crowd under the depot in the winter,” Spahn said. “Every year five or six of them would smother.”
The Boston Depot was not in good shape.
“It’s had a lot of weathering, and it was definitely in need of tender, loving care,” Morgan said.
A construction class helped Heart of the Heartlands restore the depot.
“The kids, most of them high school kids from Columbus, were great,” Morgan said. “We’d ask them to do something, and they did it, so we’d ask them to do something else, and they’d do that, too. If it had just been up to us, I don’t think it would have gotten done.”
The site also includes two maintenance of way motor car sheds, five cabooses and railroad signals. It is located two miles west of Scammon on Kansas Highway 102 and 1/4 mile west.
