Museum to celebrate 165 years of rail

MARENGO — To commemorate the 165th anniversary of the beginning of the historic Rock Island Railroad link from Iowa City to Marengo, the Iowa County Historical Society host a special lecture and exhibit titled “The Grip of the CRIP: The Legacy of the Chicago Rock Island and Pacific Railroad in Iowa” at 2 p.m., Sunday Oct. 6 at the society’s Pioneer Heritage Museum, in Marengo.

Historian David V. Wendell will display more than fifty model trains and deliver the Keynote Address for the 165th anniversary celebration. The event is free and open to the public.

Big Boy

Meanwhile, railroad fans can enjoy a taste of rail history next week as the largest steam locomotive in the world belches steam and smoke through the Iowa and Cedar River valleys.

Known as the Big Boy, the model #4014 was built in late 1941, one of the revolutionary series of steam engines that carried America through the era of World War II and into the age of diesel power.

The Big Boys lived up to their name. Built at the American Locomotive Company’s factory in New York, combined with its tender, each was 132 feet long, weighed one million pounds, and was designed to pull 3,600 tons at up to 80 miles per hour (although usually this was limited to less than fifty).

Each of these monster locomotives rolled on 24 wheels, featuring on each side four smaller guide wheels on the front, followed by eight large 68 inch diameter drive wheels and ending with four smaller wheels supporting rear below the engineer’s cabin.

To spin those wheels, coal (retrofitted for oil today), would be burned in a firebox 235 inches long by 96 inches wide. The tenders behind the engine carried 56,000 pounds of coal and 25,000 gallons of water.

The heat generated by the flame sometimes produced temperatures in excess of 1,000 degrees to transform the water into steam, which was then thrust into a piston at 300 pounds per square inch, shoving the drive rod attached to the massive wheels forward, then retracting, then forward again to propel the rolling leviathan down (or up, at less than a 1.15% grade) along ribbons of 131 pound gauge tracks.

This process could consume as much as 24,000 gallons of water and 28 tons of coal in less than one hour.

The #4014, which will be passing through the region, was completed at the same time as the attack by the Japanese Naval Air Forces at Pearl Harbor and the powerful engine remained in service for twenty years until retired in 1961.

It was placed on exhibit at the Rail Giants Museum in California until the Union Pacific Railroad, which had commissioned the locomotive to be built, decided to restore the largest model of steam engine ever made, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, which had, for the first time, connected rail travel from coast to coast.

In 2013, the #4014 was pulled and pushed by diesel locomotives to the Union Pacific Rail yards in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where it was polished and, when necessary, rebuilt into a fully functional steam locomotive, this time powered by oil to stoke its fire instead of coal.

The renovation was finished in 2019, and ever since, the thundering giant has pulled a consist of executive rail cars on tours across the Midwest, South, and Pacific Northwest.

Its latest excursion, the Heartland Tour, will bring it to Belle Plaine, running along the Union Pacific line, scheduled for an arrival Sept. 5 shortly after noon. It will proceed to Cedar Rapids and be available to the public three days later, Sept. 8, at Rochelle, Illinois.

Railroad in Iowa County

The railroad heritage of the east central region of Iowa does not end here, however. In 1854, the Chicago Rock Island and Pacific Railroad reached the east banks of the Mississippi River and, after forming a subsidiary, the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad, built a bridge over the river to extend its tracks west to Council Bluffs.

The line first crossed the river at Rock Island into Davenport in 1856, but construction, due to lack of funding, was slow, and tracks halted at Iowa City until ties and rails could resume being laid in 1859.

It was October of that year that the stretch between Iowa City and Marengo was begun, ushering in a new era for the county seat of Iowa County.

The Mississippi and Missouri Railway was absorbed into the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific line in 1866. It offered both freight and passenger service, most known for its Rock Island Rocket, pulled by EMD diesel engines that whisked passengers from Chicago to Council Bluffs (and other major cities) throughout the Midwest.

As automobiles replaced trains as the primary source of transportation, the Rock Island line fell into bankruptcy in 1980.

Four years later, the rights to the trackage was purchased by the Iowa Interstate Railroad, which maintains its large switching and repair yards between Marengo and Homestead along Highway 6, just south of the Iowa River.

The Rock Island line was the last major railroad to continue offering passenger service, all the way up to the time of the nation’s bicentennial in 1976.

Today, the Iowa Interstate serves mostly as a freight line, carrying tank cars and hoppers bringing raw commodities to and finished product from the major grain processing plants in the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City region.