My Train Pictures

A couple of posts down you can see the pictures which Bob Kelley took of an historic train which passed through Ames.  As luck would have it I had just taken some train pictures myself.  I found myself at the head of a line of cars waiting for a train to pass the Duff Avenue Intersection.  I was looking at the railroad cars and the graffiti which seemed to be painted on all of them.  I really like these moving works of art.  And while the artists would probably be arrested for their work I admire their spirit and bravery for expressing themselves.

 I always have enjoyed looking at trains as they passed and remember the passenger trains which used to go through town and watching the people enjoying their rides to places unknown.  When I was little we used to meet my great-aunt Erma when she came to town for a visit.  I was fortunate in later years to ride coast to coast on the train.  First to Los Angeles to visit my aunt Ellen and then the next year with my classmates to Washington DC and New York City for our Senior Class Trip.

There were a lot of different types of cars on this train including some oil cars and many full of lumber.  I got to thinking about how important the railroad is and has been to our country.

 You can click on any of these pictures to embiggen them.  The intersection where I was sitting is right across from the place where the my family arrived in Ames. They arrived before the station was built.  It was not much of a station and was replaced with a large brick one on the other end of Main Street.  It is no longer there although the brick station where we met the passenger trains is still extant.

I have posted this somewhere in the past but to ask you to search through the 4,838 posts on this blog is a bit much so I am just going to reproduce the pertinent bits below.  It is the story of how my Cole ancestors arrived in Ames and the 1865 train journey taken by my great- great-grandfather's family.  Enjoy.  It was written by Uncle Henry.

In the winter of 1865, father and Alvin took a trip to Iowa; liking the central part, father bought 390 acres near Ames, after he bought 80 acres north of Nevada. He paid $4600.00 ($64,743.18 in 2010 money) for the 390 acres. (worth $2,223,000 today)

We lived stayed in the old house with the other family, but there was plenty of room. In early spring we began to get ready for the trip west.

We boxed most of the household goods, and took everything including the cook stove and barrel of pork.

Alvin and I (Henry) were selected to come with the car, which also contained the horses. I had seen railroad cars but never been on one and Alvin’s experience was the same. We were told the car would start from the junction on the west side. A switch engine was pulling some cars about, one of which was ours. We learned that when the train was made up a caboose would be would be attached in which we would ride, so we eased up a bit to wait, then watched the train pull out, sans way car and us.

A man told us the train was pulling out, when the rear and was not far past. We took a run for it. At first we gained and could almost touch the last car, then it became an even race and we buckled to it desperately. Then the train began to gain, and after a half mile or strenuous running we gave up, feeling decidedly foolish.

We took a passenger train which overtook the freight about half way to Toledo. There was still no caboose, so we rode the top of the car. It was April 17, (1865) and was cloudy, damp, and we rode for hours, through and extensive swamp, filled with water, vegetation, and chills and ague. We nearly perished, but no way to get out of it, so we rode to Toledo. There we got off the train we determined to keep our car in sight. When the switch engine whisked it away, we raced back and forth with it, among the thousands of cars in the yards. Finally it eluded us and a man who saw us frantically searching, told us to go to a lighted building where we would find a string of cabooses and we could get into the one whose number gave us, and go to sleep. As there was nothing else we could do, we did as he advised and when we woke up, we were in southern Michigan.

We had brought food and pails of water for the horses but we were to eat where the trainmen did. Our experiences made us wary of leaving our car, and we had nothing to eat for over twenty-four hours. The fare we got then was stinking steak and rotten eggs, but we were hungry.

In Chicago we changed from the M.S. + N.I. to the C + NW. Ry. At the Wells Street station we got the C + NW car, unloaded out goods and repacked them.

We had unloaded the horses in the yards and led them to a stable. Chicago at the time had no hard surfaced streets, at least where we were, some were planked, but we led our horses through miles and miles of mud like black tar. We were misdirected or misunderstood directions several times. We got comfortable bed and good meals at a hotel and next day we started on, and had a comfortable bed and good meals at a hotel next day we started on, and had a comfortable trip as far as DeKalb. Here we found one of the horses very sick and kicking things to pieces, so we had the car set out and got the horses unloaded. Although it was midnight, we found a Veterinarian who took the horses to his barn, and cared for them. We went to a hotel, and next day being Sunday, we were unable to leave until evening.

At Clinton we dipped water from the river for the horses. At Belle Plaine the caboose was a box car which was very uncomfortable; it had hard wooden seats and not enough of them. An emigrant family was added to our fellow travelers. An old lady wore the pants and had a gift for making known when she was abused, and the way she went for the car, the railroad company and it’s employees was both entertaining and satisfactory. So much so that the engineer of a push engine threatened to run his engine under the caboose and shove it from the track if she did not cease her tirade.

We got to Ames after 7 ½ days, arriving in the middle of the night. I jumped off the train and landed in water to my knees. There were few houses in the town, and we bunked on the floor at the home of the agent. Nothing since has tasted so good as the ham and eggs we had for breakfast. There was no depot at Ames, no platform where could unload. We borrowed some plank at the lumber yard, and made sort of a ramp and led the horses down and got the wagon off and put it together and were loading the household goods when my father came. He had come ahead of the train. A man standing by told Father not to load too heavily, or we might get sloughed. We, never having heard the term applied to mire, felt insulted as where we came from it meant getting drunk, we paid no heed to the advice. We started off, and coming to an innocent looking patch of moist ground, drove on unsuspecting. Soon both houses were down. We got them unhitched and extricated, but the state of the wagon seemed hopeless. Among the effects was a log chain, a long one. We led the horses far enough away to be sure of firm footing, and attached the chain to the end of the wagon tongue. The horses were large and strong, so succeeded in pulling the wagon out. Without any more trouble, we reached our new home, a two story log house on a bluff overlooking the Skunk River.

I had one place pictured in my mind, but it did not resemble what we found. There was a family of five still living in the house, and they continued to live there until mid-summer.

Mr. Riddle, from whom we bought the land, was confined to the house in the last stages of consumption, and a girl about 24 died in the house a few days after we arrived.

A week later the rest of the family arrived, and the house was crowded. There were Father, Mother, Alvin and his wife and Alice, Aliva, John, myself (Henry), Arthur, William, and Julia. Mary, Susan, and Laura were married and living in Cleveland.

The house was in the timber. We had 200 acres of it, mostly hardwood, oak, and hickory. We could have bought land on the prairie for half as much, but no one lived on the prairie; although that would have been a better investment at the same price as timber. There was no income from the timber, except the scanty pasture, and what we needed for fuel.

There was 75 acres in cultivation and we proceeded to plant corn with a hoe as we had in Ohio. We had a fair crop.

Trains have always been important in our country.  It is unfortunate that we must be in such a hurry so that we have to fly everywhere. If we had put as much effort into repairing and replacing and rebuilding our train infrastructure we might have less pollution and global warming.