Railroad Suicide

JUMPS INTO SMOKESTACK
Owen Greelish Commits Suicide in a New Way
Just after 7 o'clock last night persons about the Laclede Hotel and on the street were horrified to see a man jump into the smokestack of an eastbound freight engine standing at the new watering place at the east end of the depot. The man climbed up on the rear-end of the engine and up on top of the headlight and deliberately jumped feet first into the smokestack. For a few moments the upper part of his body remained in view over the top of the smokestack and then sank out of view. As soon as possible the train men unbolted the smokestack and it was tipped back over on the boiler. The body had settled down so that about half of it was in the smokestack and half in the lower part below. A rope was passed around the body and it was pulled out but life was extinct and the flesh burned.
From letters found in his clothing the suicide is supposed to be Owen Greelish and has a brother living in Chicago and another in Leavenworth, Kan. Messages were sent to them, but up to the time of going to press no word has been received from them.
The method adopted by suicide to end his life was a most sensational one--and probably the first time such a means has been resorted to--Lebanon Rustic.
--from Old Stagecoach Stop Gazette, Vol I, No. 1 reprinted from Pulaski County Democrat, Aug. 1, 1902.

Hurrah For The Railroad

"HURRAH FOR THE RAILROAD!"
Last Monday evening, about 5 1/2 o'clock, the citizens of Rolla were greeted by the arrival of the first passenger train of cars, at the snug little depot which has, within a short time, been erected at this place . .[The] citizens of Rolla are glad...to be benefited by the trade which will naturally develop here. We notice that already quite a number of good buildings are being erected about the depot. Messers. Faulkner & Graves, Campbell & Co. and others who follow the road have already commenced moving their goods to this point. Business houses about the depot are growing more numerous, every day. It [is] a season, now, when business on the road is always light, but the preparations are being made for a large increase.
ROLLA EXPRESS, December 31, 1860

Terminal Railroad Association St Louis Perry Tower

The Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis is a terminal railroad owned by railroads in St. louis Mo. which handles traffic through its metropolitan area.

I have discovered a vintage 1944 inclusive Two payment Time book that has the Perry Tower Union Station in St. Louis .List of Names , Ocupations, Times and Pay and Earnings for Railroad Employees from that date.

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Museum of History and Trains in St. Louis Mo.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF TRANSPORT
Fifteen years ago, a nineteenth century horsecar gathered dust in much needed bus garage space seeming destined for destruction. But a group of historically minded St. Louisans saw the need for preserving such relics as a permanent record of our transportation history...for giving that perspective of the past that enable man to understand the present and plan for the future.
Therefore in 1945, five acres at Barretts Station were acquired and the National Museum of Transport was born! Today that lone "hayburner" has been joined by many other exhibits. Locomotives invite young and old to enter cabs for nostalgic "runs". Coaches...handcars...signals...lanterns...dining car china tell the story of rail travel. Streetcars...heavy electric interurbans...trackless trolleys and buses trace city transit progress. Authentic relics testify to a great transportation history.
The original five acres has grown to sixty-five, assuring ample space for planned expansion. A railroad tunnel...the first bored west of the Mississippi represents some of the difficulties encountered in opening the way West. An exhibit of commercial air transport including representative planes, will serve as a reminder of progress in the air-age. Keel boats, stern-wheelers and barges will trace the growth of the waterways and truck and bus collections will illustrate the emergence of highway transportation.
In fifteen years the National Museum of Transport has come to be recognized as the leading museum of its type. In that time the staff has changed from volunteer to professional. As the fame of the Museum has spread, the number of visitors has increased...over 100,000 last year! Through its realism, the Museum offers a kind of education that is attractive and stimulating to the mind. Educational class attendance totaled over 20,000 in 1959.
The widespread interest in the Museum indicates that it has succeeded in the founders' purpose...to provide motivation for further conquest of time and space through preservation of the rich heritage of the past.
Prominent leaders of business, education and Labor from throughout the United States make up the Board of Directors, one member of which is Clark Hungerford, Chairman and President of the Frisco Railroad.
The National Museum of Transport is a nonprofit educational Corporation, supported by donations, individual and corporate memberships, admissions and concession sales. Contributions are tax-deductible.
Railroaders in general, and the Frisco family in particular, can take pride in having been a part of the founding of this educational monument to all transportation -- the service that has bound together and thus made possible America's great culture.

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Finding Rare Railroad Items

Many great places to look are right near your home. Some can be found on the internet. Online auctions. Ebay. Craigs list. I like to go to Estate Auctions and dig threw boxes being auctioned or ones i have bought. One great find is when i bid on a Online Auction "Govdeals.com" and bought a whole basement full of boxes full of paperwork and manuals . I had to take alot of junk but it was worth it. I came of with alot of Historic items from the "Union Station in St. Louis". Kept alot but sold some on Ebay.

Another idea i picked up is talking with my neighbors as i walk the neighborhood and mention i like Train items and many times i get great leads thru yard sales they have or they invite me in to buy items.

This is just some of the ways i use to help in my collection of Railfan collecting .

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZdurbinsstuffQQhtZ-1

Railway Near Gano Missouri

I was out searching today out near Gano Village on Hiway 19 about 5 miles from Salem Mo.Rail lines look to be the old "Salem ,Winona and Southern Railroad" .Now out of business.

Update:After more reseach .Salem ,Winona and Southern was farther south.

I had been seeing a mound of dirt stretching for a mile or 2 parallel of Route 19. Looked like old rail lines . I stopped in a Gano Store & asking Dena (the owner) about the mounds running along side of the road.She told me it was a Rail right of way buried by the State of Missouri Transportation (MoDot) a while back. Rail lines are visable from road on right of way across from Gano Store. Stop in .Great Burgers! Tell Dena "Durb" sent ya.

Here is what i have researched about the Rail line.

Minerals have influenced the Dent County economy. Greatest was the iron furnace built at Sligo starting in 1880 and active until 1923, 43 years. Sligo was the fourth iron works built in the state, following Meramec, Midland and Nova Scotia. There was plenty of iron ore -- Simmons Hill in Salem, Orchard and Cherry Valley, Millsap, Pomeroy, Hawkins Banks, Red Hill and Scotia. Mr. Elmer writes in his history that the Sligo furnace was the most successful and continued longer than any other iron furnace in Missouri. The Sligo furnace was built on Crooked Creek and produced 60 to 80 tons of pig iron a day, with some runs of up to 100 tons. E.B. Sankey came from New Castle, Pa. in 1870 to survey the St.Louis-Salem and Little Rock Railroad from Cuba to Salem. The Sligo & Eastern Railroad ran a branch to East End to gather wood for the kilns producing charcoal for the furnace. Sligo’s population, in its big years reached 1,000.

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Railin as i Go !

I will be posting pic's and notes as days go by of my Railin' adventures. Tommorow i hope to take more Pictures of the old Salem ,Winona, Southern Railroad wich is now defunct and rails have been dug up. I have noticed mounds on Missouri Hiway 19 near Gano Village missouri.

Later durb----

Railroad Comes to Phelps County

The coming of the railroad to Phelps County had an impact which, in 1990, is difficult to imagine. The rail line began as the Southwest Branch of the Pacific Railroad, became prominent as part of the St. Louis-San Francisco (Frisco) Railway, and is now part of the Burlington Northern system. The road was an important force in the creation of the county itself, and the towns of Rosati, St. James, Rolla, Arlington and Jerome are direct legacies of railroad construction and increased land values along the right-of-way. Dillon, which no longer exists, and Newburg, founded in 1883, owed their disparate fortunes to developments along the railroad. Rural inhabitants of Phelps County were deeply effected. Those near the settlements along the Little Piney and Dry Fork creeks could look forward to ready markets for cash crops instead of almost wholly subsistence farming, and the owners of improved farms saw their land increase in value.
Entrepreneurs and businessmen stood to benefit greatly. At the Maramec Iron Works, east of St. James, William James, an enthusiastic promoter and investor in the line, saw in the railroad a solution to the crippling expense of freighting the finished products of his furnace and forges. The railroad also affected the road network of the area.
The earliest wagon roads had radiated like spokes from a hub at the Iron Works, passing through Lake Spring, Hartville, and the Gasconade River country to markets and shipping points and markets at Potosi, St. Louis, Springfield, and Hermann. Once railroad construction began on a direct line linking St. Louis and Springfield, the most important roads became those connecting with the rail line.
This distinct shift in the economic trade axis can be seen in the operations of the lead mining firm of Blow & Kennett, which operated far to the southwest of Phelps County in Granby, Missouri. Lead mined at Granby had been laboriously and expensively hauled to shipping points on the Missouri and Osage rivers. The Blow & Kennett freight book (available on microfilm at the Western Historical Manuscript Collection--Rolla) shows that the firm's output was redirected toward the Southwest Branch as soon as it came within reach. By October 1860, Blow & Kennett's products were consigned to the railroad agent at Dillon; by December of the same year they were shipped to the railhead at Rolla.
The rail line attracted businessmen whose livelihoods depended on direct connections with the railroad. Edmund Ward Bishop, founder of Rolla, and Andrew Malcomb, one of the builders of the Phelps County courthouse, first came as railroad construction contractors. Homer Fellows and Robert McElhaney, general merchants and wholesalers, and Union army veterans, began business after the Civil War at St. James and Rolla before moving to Springfield. Franklin Hoke Barnitz, originally from Pennsylvania, capitalized on his experience as a Union army teamster to operate a freight business first from Rolla and then Little Piney. He hauled from the railhead to points in southern Missouri, northwest Arkansas, Indian Territory and Texas. Many other entrepreneurs came to Phelps County in order to follow the "main chance" and in so doing contributed to the area's economic growth.

Written and compiled by John F . Bradbury , Jr.

Portageville Missouri Depot

Here is a Depot in Portageville Missouri witch was ran by my Great Uncle (Dan Durbin) as a Foreman back around 1910. I have read many articles on them and the Hobo's as they would stop by asking for food .

The Railroad began in 1898 and sold to Frisco about 1900

Rolla Missouri Engine 1501 at Schuman Park

On Jan. 25th 1955 Rolla became the proud owner of Frisco's "Engine 1501" and passenger car. Located at Schuman Park .Former site of frisco's water tank next to BNSF tracks.

Large nice fence surround this giant . Word has it . Before fence many items off the Engine and passenger car were raided before fence was erected. Passenger car looks to be in need of repair but thats alright . It still is a sight to see.

Easy to locate .Just off I-44 and make left at light and turn right before R/R tracks.

Abandoned Railroad Lines Of Missouri and Where

It's getting that time of year again when alot of us Railfans get out searching new and old abandoned R/R lines in the area. There are alot of great sites to help you with your searchs .Remember be careful when out and about to obey land rites .The railroads also can be very protective these days about right of ways.Always ask before going on to private lands. I take a metal detector some days to look for spikes and Rail nails.



Here a few great sites to help you start looking .

http://www.abandonedrailroads.com/



http://www.abandonedrails.com/



http://abandonedrailroads.homestead.com/



Many rails are being abandoned more and more due high cost of maintaining



Later ,Durb----

More On Shannon County Tram Lines

During the sixty years following the Civil War, the United States developed into a largely industrialized urban nation. Governments and large commercial corporations collaborated to expand the system of railroads and organized the economy on a national scale. Historians have applied the term "New South" to describe the rising interest in internal improvements and industrial development in the South after the war.

The Missouri Lumber and Mining Company, the leading producer of this group, accelerated its cutting of timber after the turn of the century. The number of people employed by the company climbed from 1,000 in 1900 to 1,500 in 1905. Little choice pine timber remained near Grandin in 1900, and the company's logging operations moved increasingly northward. By 1903, ML&M pined out 213,017 of the 324,017 acres of land that it had purchased since 1888. Its land acquisitions, after 1900, were focused in Shannon County. The St. Louis and San Francisco Railway Company (Frisco), which purchased the Kansas City, Springfield, and Memphis Railroad in 1901, helped to entice Missouri Lumber into this more isolated area by offering the company a reduced freight rate for lumber shipped from northwest Shannon County. In 1907, the most profitable year for Missouri Lumber and Mining, the company began laying tram lines into these northwest holdings. It constructed a standard gauge line, beginning from the Current River Railroad two miles west of Winona, north up Mahans Creek to its mouth and then across Jacks Fork and west to Horse Hollow. In Horse Hollow, the company built a logging camp named Angeline. Missouri Lumber incorporated the tram line as the Grandin and Northwestern Railroad Company, and it later became the Salem, Winona, and Southern Railroad Company.

Soon after laying the tram lines into northwest Shannon County, Missouri Lumber and Mining Company shut down the Grandin mill. Shipping the logs more than sixty miles from the Jack Forks area to Grandin proved costly. A brief economic recession at the end of 1907 cut lumber prices and lumber orders dropped. The company began plans to remove its milling complex to Shannon County. In early autumn 1909, the lumber company literally packed up the Grandin mill and moved it to a site one mile west of Eminence and a short distance up Mahans Creek. It also built a town at the site, which became West Eminence and, like the mill works, the company relocated many of the buildings, such as the houses, from Grandin to the new mill town. The Missouri Lumber company continued to cut yellow pine in the region for another ten years before selling the mill at West Eminence.

Other helpful Info from http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/ozar/hrs6.htm

Current River Railroad

When i was little my grandparents had a farm in central Missouri .Shannon County. I used to wander around the woods and look for treasures. One day Bingo!!! I found a R/R spike in the middle of their property. 180 miles from any large city. Later in life i got to thinking about that day .I did some investigating and came up with some tidbits.

The tracks marks and Spikes i found were R/R tram lines from the 1920's and from a now defunct Current River R/R lines used to transport logs to the Current River then to Southern Shannon County for prossesing the White Oaks to St. Louis to be made into lumber or Rail Ties.

More info to come.

Later Durb------

Amtrak Railroad Locomotive Register

Many Locomotive Registers have become very collectable due to rise in Railfan groups around the country and for that matter around the world.

Many of our youth have never rode on a train. I for one have not been on one since 1960's.

Later Durb----

Ebaying

Sometime after going though all my boxes and boxes of rail items i decided to try to sell a few of the manuals.

Here is a 1979 Amtrak Locomotive , Railcar Register manual and list of assignments by dates.

I'll let you know how auction goes.

Follow along http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=200312617888

Later,durb----

Comin along fine

Welcome to "Durbsrails" a blog about my favorite subject.Trains.
Thanks for checking in .I will be updating as much as i can.
I am a collector of railroad items.I started several years ago but got started big last year by buying a whole basement full of Railroading items .3 truck loads to be exact. Took many months to go through.

Items like vintage diagram, letters,awards, manuals, menus, catalogues, checks, bag checks, reciepts, ladings and much much more......

Later......