The Spooner Rails (Part 2 of 2)

The old rail yard is fascinating to me. It cuts a wide swath through town creating a right side of the tracks and a wrong side. Abandonment has caused considerable opportunity for development and some confusion as to right or wrong side.

The old main track bed has become a recreational trail for snowmobiles, 4-wheelers, etc. The funny-looking tower is the watering tower, with gravity flow water to fill the tanks of the old steam locomotives. The Tamarack bar is one of our favorite haunts and 30 year old Jake now is the bartender there on the weekends for a few extra dollars. Turns out the curator gig didn't pay squat.............

...........The rail yard was about 25 tracks wide and 40 trains a day crossed through Spooner at the peak, around 1910. There are a few guys who still work for the railroad, even though trains haven't come to Spooner in 20 years. They commute to work in a nearby city. The Tamarack bar has a volleyball league, in which Jake and Hannah and I play. These are the courts, quietly resting over the ground where huge locomotives once shook the ground almost continuously.......

.....We have a roundhouse, where train equipment was maintained and repaired. It is not a full circle but about 40% remains of what may have been a full roundhouse. In the picture is the circular turntable which turned engines or cars to go in and out of the roundhouse bays. Not many of these in existence anymore.........

............This is the south remnant of the roundhouse, and another view of the quietly decaying turntable....

.............There is a lot of equipment lying around awaiting restoration or becoming parts for other projects. This old engine is fabled to have been an engine on the famous "400" which ran the 400 miles from Minneapolis to Chicago in 400 minutes in the heyday. Pretty remarkable considering that now, if you add driving out to the airport (the railroad stations are right downtown on both ends), parking time, registration time, flight time, and generally wasted time the airline provides for you, it adds up to way over 400 minutes to go from Minneapolis to Chicago now. See? New and improved!! One of my "things" if you read this "Uncle Hans" blog..............

Most of the old stuff seems to come from the Algoma Central, a small Canadian line that is now reduced to a tourist train north out of Sault Saint Marie. We have ridden it with our snowmobiles,. They have a deal where they haul your sleds 300 miles north and you ride them back to SSM. Strange to see those cars in Spooner......

..........These cars are being restored for the pizza train............

.........the final restoration result. Note each car has a name.........

....Dick Gilberg was a prominent local rail..........

.......this is their pride and joy, it pulls the pizza train most days......

...........a view from the north end of the depot, showing some of the other assorted pieces lying around, including two old snowplows.....

.............a final view of the museum entrance. It is decidedly low key for reasons of cost and authenticity.............

...........and now, the little bonus. This is the only picture I can find in the digital file of the military restoration stuff. It is a half-track with a 4 50-caliber machine gun anti-aircraft mount. The other pictures are on old fashioned film and need to be scanned, but we did just buy a new higher quality scanner and that may be a project someday.

New flash! I just talked to Neil. As I suspected, he is having trouble sending he pictures of the trip. We are meeting tomorrow halfway to exchange the Cadillac for the wedding and he will hand me the pictures on a disk. Stay tuned!.....