Wisconsin, Iowa & Nebraska Railway

Classic Trains General Discussion
1

I have a very old remittance slip for the Wisconsin, Iowa & Nebraska
Railway, and the Des Moines, Osceola & Southern Railroad, both of
which are referred-to collectively on the document as the “Diagonal
Route”.

The document is dated March 18, 1886, written-out at station #80
located in Berlin, Iowa (southwest of Waterloo, near, but still a bit
west of the former M&StL north-south main). This is confirmed by
the slip listing the local treasurer being in Des Moines.

Could this have been a predecessor of the M&StL? The agent’s name
was F. B. Lowry, with the remitter being J. Johnston.

Any ideas?[?]

2

I would guess the W,I&N formed the Chicago Great Western route between Oelwein, Waterloo and Des Moines. It was on a diagonal and passed through Berlin.

3

Are you sure the CGW went through Berlin, IA? Berlin looks to be too far
to the west for the line Waterloo-Marshalltown-Des Moines. Berlin is
39 miles due west of Reinbeck which was on the CGW main to Des
Moines.

4

You doubt Dale?[;)]
Here you go-
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Acres/6306/hsfcgw10.htm#winr

According to this 1897 map, Berlin was in Tama County between Reinbeck and Gladbrook, at or near Lincoln, on the CGW line. It may be that Berlin changed it’s name to Lincoln during WW1.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/map_item.pl?data=/home/www/data/gmd/gmd415/g4151/g4151p/rr002200.sid&style=rrmap&itemLink=D?gmd:5:./temp/~ammem_9chj::&title=Galbraith’s%20railway%20mail%20service%20maps,%20Iowa.

If the link does not work, try here, go to geographic locations, then Iowa, then map 5.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/rrhtml/rrhome.html

5

You folks are right on target. I just pulled out my copy of Phillip Hastings’
Chicago Great Western - Iowa In The Merger Decade and sure enough
on page 75 it shows a picture of a plow extra passing through Lincoln, IA
with the caption describing the town’s name change as a result of WWI.

Man that’s weird - the present-day Berlin, IA shows-up on Yahoo! Maps
39 miles west of Reinbeck. Could it be that some of the citizens of German
heritage in that area decided to name the other community “Berlin” later?
There’s got to be a story there.

6

As mentioned, this was the predecessor to the CGW. However, at the time it was the Minnesota & Northwestern. It wasnt called Chicago Great Western until sometime after the purchase of the diagonal route.