American Passenger Train History Museum continues to chug along

By Andrew Larson, alarson@charlescitypress.com

Editor’s Note: Due to an editing error, a portion of this story, originally published in the Community Section of the Progress Edition, was left out. The following is the story in its entirety.

All aboard for a first class trip back to a time when trains were (arguably) the classiest way to travel, if not the fastest. The American Passenger Train History Museum in Charles City. will offer that opportunity and more when it eventually opens.

The end goal of the museum, located at 1010 North Grand Avenue, is to refurbish the Milwaukee Road depot in order to make it into a gateway leading visitors to five to seven samples of famous passenger trains that they will be able to board, walk through and get a taste of what it was like to ride them back in their heyday.

“The idea will be people will come into the main depot, and look at some displays, buy their tickets for the museum and come into the baggage room which will be a theater and they can watch a movie about the trains they are about to walk out and see and walk through,” said Bob Moen, president of the American Passenger Train History Museum, who explained that the depot and the movies shown are meant to orientate visitors to what they’re about to see once they step into the museum proper.

“We’ll show different films here. There is a film we have in mind that talks about passenger trains and we’re going to try to use a shortened version of that that just explains the history of passenger trains in the United States and stuff like that,” said Moen. “This (The baggage room) can also be available for guest speakers and lectures and stuff like that. This building will be available for meeting space. You can have meetings in any of these three rooms in the evenings and other times. It will also be available for wedding rentals eventually.”

The actual museum itself will be in the form of three historic trains consisting of the sort of cars you would have seen or ridden in during the 1950s or 1960s, all fully restored and brought back to their former glory.

“We have sleeping cars, dining cars, lounge cars, coaches and dome cars, so we have different types of cars around these trains, and when we’re done we’re going to have three trains sitting here that will be about a five, six, seven car sample of what once was a 15-car train,” Moen explained. “And you’ll be able to see what it was like, and walk through it and sit in it and kids can play with things.

“These cars date from 1940 to 1955 or so. That’s when they were built. They operated in the 1940s, ‘50s, 1960s and into the 1970s. Some of these cars were in the Amtrak service in the early days of Amtrak.”

Trains that will be on display include a Milwaukee Road Hiawatha, a Great Northern Empire Builder, as well as cars from Burlington Zephyrs, Rock Island Rockets and Santa Fe Chiefs.

“We’ve been assembling passenger cars from three famous trains. We have a silver train, which could be a Burlington Zephyr, it could be a Rock Island Rocket, it can be a Santa Fe Chief,” said Moen. “With the silver train we’re going to be able to display each year a different train. By changing the lounge cars, changing the configuration of the train we can give you an idea what that train was like. The silver trains were built by the Budd Company and so they’re pretty similar and they’re all stainless steel construction.”

The museum’s collection of historic cars isn’t complete, yet, as a few new additions are currently on the way, one car that represents the transition of the passenger train into a more modern era, and another one on the opposite end of the spectrum that predates everything else in the museum.

We have a two-level car that’s going to be coming that shows the transition from the single level cars to two-level cars that Amtrak now uses,” said Moen. “We have recently been donated to us a wooden coach built in 1883, which is a hundred-and-40-something years old and it was fully restored. The owner came here, saw what we’re doing and he decided he wanted us to have this car because he’s up in years and he thought this would be a good home for it.

“We’re hoping to get that car this spring, yet. It’s all original on the inside. You get in the car and it’s got pot-bellied stoves in the corner and velvet seats from that era. You sit there and swear that Abraham Lincoln is going to come out of the bathroom any minute with his stovepipe hat. It’s that old. That car we’re going to have to keep indoors. It can’t be left outside. We’re going to have to eventually find a better way to display it, but we’ll bring it out for special events and stuff like that.”

Another upcoming addition to the museum will cater to wheelchair bound visitors who would be unable to enter the other cars.

“We’ve also got an Illinois Central Diner Lounge that’s coming. That car has wide doors, which we figure we’re going to make that our handicap accessible car, so somebody with a wheelchair can get into one car, because these cars are too narrow. We can’t adjust the doors,” said Moen. “We found this one car that had holes cut in the side of it for a restaurant that we got, this Illinois Central diner, and we decided that it would be a great car for handicap accessibility so that a person in a wheelchair could get in that car and at least be in one of them. We’d love to get them in all the cars, but the hallways are like 27 inches wide and it just doesn’t work that way.”

The museum is a project that could be said to be 30 years in the making, and started with a group of guys who loved trains when they were young got together and decided to share their passion with the community.

“Most of us in our group rode these trains as kids. Our younger volunteers wish they had ridden these trains as kids,” said Moen. “I remember riding on these trains at 80, 90 miles an hour as a kid, and I just thought they were really quite fascinating. Then one day I found out I could own one, and so that got me started.

“I’m really big into preservation and showing people what once was here. I started with one car and then I acquired more and these friends of mine did the same thing and we decided to pool our resources to create this museum. We also went to all the effort to save these cars we were so fascinated with when we were 12 years old, and we wanted them to be preserved so they would survive us and people could see what this was all about and what this era was like.”

The opening of the museum is still quite a ways out. It will probably be another few years before the depot and the trains are ready to host visitors, according to Moen. The group would love to be finished sooner, but inflation and rising construction costs have bogged down the project, so fundraising has become a big priority and challenge.

“Right now we are in the middle of the restoration phase of the building,” said Moen. “We had originally been told that it would cost $657,000 to restore the building. Because in the last four years with inflation and construction costs going crazy it has now doubled, and so this is going to be a little bit of an uphill battle to assemble enough funds to be able to do this, because now we’re looking at over a million (dollars) to restore the building.

“The key thing is we have the facility, we have the depot, we have most of the cars and now they need to be restored, but just assembling all this has been a monstrous undertaking. To start a railroad museum from scratch takes time.”

Anyone wanting to donate can do so at First Security Bank. A direct check would be best, at least as far as tax purposes, Moen noted. There is also a link to donate via PayPal at the museum’s website, www.apthm.org.

“So that is the challenge we have right now,” said Moen. “The community has backed us in a big way, and yet now the costs have just gone even higher, so we’re looking at trying to find ways to see if we can restore the building ourselves or somehow in a less expensive way. Either way it’s still going to cost money to get this building fully operational. The community pulled together almost $400,000 to move the building. They’ve given us another $250,000 to do what we’ve done so far, but that’s $250,000 against what may be $1.3 million in expenses, so we still have a ways to go.”

The good news is that even if it takes longer than expected to get the museum ready to go, there really is no rush. The refurbishment of the train depot has gone along smoothly enough, and the building is in good enough shape that it can wait until the necessary funds are available to finish up the project.

“We spent about $250,000 here recently by redoing these floors and putting in insulation and getting the plumbing installed in the floors. What we need to do in the next phase is electrical, plumbing and heating, ventilation and air conditioning,” said Moen. “The building is solid. It’s secure. We have a new roof on it. So this building can wait, if we have to wait. It can be here mothballed as we continue to fundraise and work it into what we can afford to do as a community. The quicker we can get grants and donations the quicker we can get this done. We would love to be open in two or three years, but given what we’re up against here for the cost of restoring this building it may be a little while, yet. We’re frustrated. We want to be done, but it takes money.”

Beyond needing money, the group is always looking for more volunteers to help with the work of restoring the trains. With broken windows needing to be replaced and graffiti needing to be removed, extra hands are always welcome.

“We are eager for anyone interested. Anybody who wants to get involved and get their hands dirty and just get into this, we definitely could use more volunteers,” said Moen. “You don’t have to be an expert at anything to do it. Handyman skills are really helpful, but a lot of what we’re doing is painting, window replacement and stuff like that.”

Moen noted that anybody looking to get involved can call him at 612-240-4407.

“Give us a call. We generally work on the cars on the weekends. We work and go out to dinner and have fun, watch some train slides in the evening and then go back and work on the cars. Whatever projects we can get done we try to work on on the weekends,” said Moen. “We definitely could use volunteers and assistance in any way and you don’t have to be a fancy expert to do it. We just need enthusiasm and a pair of hands.”