All Aboard!

MT. PLEASANT — The Mark Twain Zephyr has a long history in Mt. Pleasant. This Sunday at 2 p.m. you can learn more about the history of the Zephyr and meet the author of the three volume series “Mark Twain Zephyr: History, Restoration & Rebirth” for a book signing.

Robert Tabern the director of Passenger Development for the Wisconsin Great Northern Railroad and the author of “Mark Twain Zephyr: History, Restoration & Rebirth” will be presenting at the Amtrak station in Mt. Pleasant and will be selling and signing copies of his books at the stop.

The Mark Twain Zephyr was one of the first streamliners for the Iowa, Illinois and Missouri area back in 1935.

For most of it’s life the train ran between Burlington and St. Louis delivering passengers at stops along the way. It ran this route daily.

It went to St. Louis so often that there was a post office built in the engine of the train and it would deliver mail to St. Louis the same day.

The five-car train included two passenger cars that carried around 95 passengers on it’s route.

The train was in service for 23 years before it was retired to the Burlington train yard in 1958.

The train sat in Burlington until it was bought by Earnie A. Hayes, of Mt. Pleasant, in 1962.

Hayes was an avid advocate for the community and an insurance salesperson in town who wanted to bring a tourist draw to Mt. Pleasant.

Interstate 80 had been built to the north, and he was worried that would pull away the tourist draw from Mt. Pleasant.

However, Hayes wasn’t able to renovate the train which had a price tag of $4 million to $6 million.

So in 1968 Hayes sold it to the Midwest Central Railroad which faced a similar problem with funding.

The train was sold to the Old Threshers Foundation in the mid 70s but they ran into a funding issue and weren’t able to run the train due to a difference in gauges of track.

It stayed there until 1979, when it was sold to another owner. It stayed in Mt. Pleasant for 17 years.

For the next 40 years, the historic train would pass between no less than four different private owners; none of whom had the resources to complete the costly multimillion-dollar renovations needed.

The Wisconsin Great Northern Railroad stepped in last summer, purchasing the five train cars and bringing them to northwest Wisconsin for repair. In the future, the Mark Twain Zephyr will be fully operable, giving passengers rides on the tourist railroad’s mainline out of Trego, Wisconsin.