DOES ANY OF THE OLD TIMERS OUT THERE REMEMBER WHAT THE NAME OF THE RAILROAD LINE THAT RAN IN NORTHEAST NEBRASKA - NORFORK, WAYNE, HARTINGTON, CROFTON AND ETC. MOST RAN IN THE 20s-60s AND THEN CLOSED DOWN.
THANK YOU
That railroad was the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha. The railroad was controlled by the Chicago & North Western Railway from the mid 1920s.
Hi, I went to high school in Wayne, but the railroad was long gone by then. I believe the very earliest railroad to reach Northeastern Nebraska was the Fremont, Elkhorn, & Missouri Valley RR. In 1871, the FE&MV started building northwest from Fremont to Wisner, where they ran out of money. Discovery of gold in South Dakota’s Black Hills in 1874 renewed investor interest in the line and construction resumed. In the 1885, the railroad reached Chadron in far western Nebraska, and pushed north to Rapid City, S.D. By then, the railroad was owned by the C&NW, although the name didn’t officially change until the early 1900s. C&NW began abandoning lines in Northeastern Nebraska in the 1960s. In 1991, the railway filed an application to abandon the Norfolk-to-Chadron line. The last trains operated on Dec. 1, 1992. Much of the right-of-way from Norfolk westward across Nebraska’s northern counties is now the Cowboy Recreation and Nature Trail, the nation’s longest rails-to-trails project. The former C&NW yard in Norfolk, Neb., is still in service and is now operated by the Nebraska Central short line. – Carl
Carl,
Thanks for the information, that’s the first time I’ve seen the dates for the abandoment of that portion of the C&NW. I was in North Central Nebraska (Holt County, the O’Neill area about 65 miles from Norfolk) in 1994 and 2005. In '94 the tracks were still there but obviously nothing was running. In '05 it was all trains the only obvious thing left from the railroad was some of the small bridges. My grandmother grew up about a 1/4 mile from that line, that’s where my interest comes from.
I’ve been trying to find out what type of engines were running on that part of NE from 1956 to 1965 but the closest pictures I’ve found are the Fremont area with a couple from Norfolk. I want to get a C&NW engine at some point but I want to make sure it’s one that would have been seen in the time period I mentioned.
Colin
Good place to start would be the recent book “The Omaha Road” by Stan Mailer, you can also check out the CNW Historical Society website.
Locomotives (steam and diesel) were lettered for the C.St.P.M.& O. into the 1950’s, from the late thirties or so on the RR initials were used along with the CNW System herald.
In some ways, they really were more like two related railroads than a normal parent-subsidiary arrangement. The CNW was headquartered in Chicago, the Omaha in Minneapolis, each with their own president, board, etc. Each had their own preferences in locomotives and other equipment, and didn’t mix and match with the ‘other’ roads engines etc. too much.
An example of this difference can be found today at the Twin City Model Railroad Club layout in St. Paul MN. In 1935 the CNW ordered two complete sets of “O” scale models of the new 400 passenger train which ran between Chicago and Mpls/St.Paul using both CNW and Omaha trackage (the Omaha had a lot of track in Wisconsin).
One set was for the CNW HQ in Chicago, the other for the Omaha HQ in Mpls. The president of the Omaha was fine with the cars, but couldn’t stand the CNW 4-6-2, so hired a custom modeller to build a model of an Omaha 600-class pacific (the world’s biggest 4-6-2’s) and used that in the display instead. That Omaha engine and the 400 cars are part of the club’s operating fleet still today. [:)]