Wayne Eddy Affair interview with Jim Machacek, August 16, 2007, part 2 |
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Object Description
| Title | Wayne Eddy Affair interview with Jim Machacek, August 16, 2007, part 2 |
| Creator | KYMN Radio |
| Description | Wayne Eddy Affair interview with Jim Machacek, August 16, 2007, part 2, on KYMN Radio. |
| Date of Creation | 8/16/2007 |
| Minnesota Reflections Topic | Communication |
| Item Type | Sound Recording - Nonmusical |
| Item Physical Format | Broadcasts |
| Locally Assigned Subject Headings | Businesses |
| Minnesota City or Township | Northfield |
| Minnesota County | Rice |
| Contributing Institution |
Northfield History Collaborative KYMN Radio |
| Contact Information | KYMN Radio: 200 Division St. S., Suite 260, Northfield, MN, 55057. http://kymnradio.net |
| Rights Management | This image may not be reproduced for any reason without the express written consent of KYMN Radio, http://kymnradio.net |
| NHC File Name | 2007_08_16_2_machacek_jim |
| Collection Title | Northfield History Collaborative |
| Transcription (FullText) | Jim Machacek Narrator Wayne Eddy Interviewer August 16, 2007 The Wayne Eddy Affair KYMN Radio WE: Hello everybody, welcome back to the Wayne Eddy Affair on KYMN Radio out of Northfield, Minnesota. Every once in a while I believe somebody tunes to 1080, just go across the AM dial and see what's on the air. We're broadcasting from right downtown Northfield, Minnesota, where so many positive things take place all the time. We're on Division Street, the main drag, as some people say. Our studios are on the first floor of a former medical arts building, and we're looking at the Northfield Public Library, a little bit of the Carleton campus, behind me would be the St. Olaf campus, and over my right shoulder would be Malt-O-Meal, all kinds of great things, and under the bydock on Highway 3 was a place called the Northfield Foundry, and Mr. Jim Machacek was part of that for many years, and went off into other things, but always a devotee of the railroad. I'm trying to establish how the Minneapolis, Northfield, and Southern Railroad became a railroad, Jim's trying to explain it to me and it's a little bit more detailed than I probably can comprehend, eh, Jimmy? JM: Could be. But it's very interesting though, because it's had a lot of ups and downs but in the long run it's been a pretty good railroad. WE: In black and white, as simple as possible, I'm at the depot in Northfield, Minnesota, and I'm standing on one set of railroad tracks, where's it going to take me if I go—well, it looks like it goes east and west, no, it goes north and south, excuse me. JM: They all go north and south except for the one that goes over to Randolph. WE: Okay, so now if I go north, where's that railroad going to take us, so people can kind of get an idea of where it goes through? JM: Well, where they actually go, the old Milwaukee Road used to go straight north out of Northfield, that was started I think in 1866, it came down this way in 1866, but if you went north on it it would go through Farmington, Rosemont, and then it would go down in the river bottom and come in where the Minnehaha Depot is, in South Minneapolis, that's where it went, and then from there it went tot South Minneapolis where their big shops were, and then it would go into the old Milwaukee Depot on Washington Avenue. That was the original way. Now later, it would turn out of Rosemont and go into St. Paul, through South St. Paul and that area, Newport, South St. Paul, and then into the Union Depot in St. Paul and then go to Minneapolis, and people used to commute that way to the Cities, believe it or not, because of their times. Fritz Arnesson and I, early in the morning after he got done with his paper, would hit the six o' clock train to Rock Island and hop on and go up to the Cities for a day. We'd go through St. Paul, lot of commuters from St. Paul to Minneapolis in those days, there might have been one carload full of those commuters, they would use the railroad just to get from downtown St. Paul to downtown Minneapolis. WE: How much would that ride cost you? JM: Well, it cost Fritz and I probably seventy-five cents each. WE: That was pretty expensive then, wasn't it? JM: It was, yes. Then from Minneapolis to St. Paul they got maybe seventy-five cents because it was kind of a commuter deal, maybe sixty cents or something like that. But I was always surprised on the amount of commuters that just for that short trip would use the railroad. WE: Just for my own personal satisfaction, which was grander, St. Paul Union Depot or the Minneapolis? JM: Well, the St. Paul Union Depot, which still exists—of course they both still exist—but the St. Paul Union Depot is huge, you know, it at one time ranked in the top ten railroad centers in the United States, and that's St. Paul only. The thing is that all the railroads ran through St. Paul too, except for the Minneapolis, Northfield, and Southern, that skirted but never went to St. Paul, because it went on the west side of the Twin Cities, and that's one reason it became a good freight railroad, because it bypassed the bottlenecks of St. Paul. WE: Now did was there a charge by any of the municipalities or anything for trains to go through their communities? JM: No, they all had government 'okay's' on that. WE: How about when you use the yards up in St. Paul and switch and all that? JM: No, the yards and everything belonged to the railroads. Of course, I think that maybe the Great Northern, Northern Pacific probably were land-grant railroads. The Milwaukee might have been because it was early, I'm not sure, all the subsequent railroads, like for instance the Chicago Great Western which came on a little bit later, I don't think they were land grant, they had to go out and get their money WE: And land-grant, was that somebody with their hands out back in the old days? JM: Well, the railroads had their hands out. I don't know if all the land grants were identical but I know they got so many acres on each side of the railroad if they were like the Great Northern or Northern Pacific, because they were going through land where no railroad had ever been. Union Pacific I think was a land grant as well, and of course that was the first transcontinental railroad going through Nebraska, I think that was a land grant, and then of course was hooked up with the Central Pacific out of California, the Leeland Stanford-operated railroad WE: And so when these railroads, when they abandon railroad tracks, beds, whatever you want to call them, did that revert back to the American taxpayer? JM: Usually they did, yes, under most laws. Now, there might have been some cases when they weren't, that might have been one reason why the trail people have been after abandoned railway beds, but some of them reverted back to original owners and things. It kind of depends on what the state laws are and they could vary quite a bit, I'm sure. WE: Do you know of any one exciting story where anyone made a killing because they out-waited the railroad and at the end they had to have that guy's land to put the tracks on to make everything work? JM: I'm sure that happened, and I suppose the railroad probably went out and, especially if it was not a land grant, if it was a land grant they got it, but if it wasn't, then they'd have to pay a little extra or grease some palms or do something to get the right-of-way that they required. WE: So the first trains were all steam engines, right? JM: Yes. WE: And then from there they went to diesel then to electric, or are diesel and electric the same thing? JM: Well, the first railroad in the United States, like 1842 or something like that, used steam. There were some horse-drawn railways as well, and of course there were horse-drawn trolley cars before they had electric trolley cars. Even in Minneapolis I ran across a brochure from the 1860s or something like that, where the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, or at least their street rail companies, were selling horse-drawn cars, because they didn't need them anymore when electricity came in, which was probably the late 1860s. WE: What railroad played a major part in the Civil War from this area? JM: Well, there was the Baltimore and Ohio that were taken over by the government. The US military railway system was started during the Civil War and they were on all the battlefronts. The government took over and made military railroads. WE: Like at the Rice County Historical Society's annual June USO dance, we displayed a flag that was flown in battle by the Bridgewater Yankee Union Troop. I'm trying to picture how those guys got to Pennsylvania. JM: They walked, twenty miles a day. WE: They didn't even jump on a train? JM: Nope, there was no train here at that time, because the train didn't get here until 1866, and that was just this far, to get the rest of the way it took another couple of years. Then it got down to Austin, then it turned east and then headed towards Chicago. So they walked, and their normal complement was twenty miles a day they. WE: Wow. I never knew that. JM: Oh yes. So it took them a couple days to get there. WE: I'd hate to be drafted if the first thing you're going to do is walk forever. JM: Well, they got into shape, you know, on the way down. But in the battle areas out east they had railroads, the military railroads had taken over for Baltimore and Ohio and the other railroads in the area. WE: You know, we're talking a lot of freight with the MNS. Was there a fancy-dancy passenger service too on the MNS? JM: Until 1942, they used to run the gas-electric cars, they were single cars with a motorman and a conductor, and the last ones used to leave here about nine in the morning and get to the Cities at about ten thirty and then come back, it used to get in here at six twenty coming back. And I met it many times, because I used to help them unload the freight off it, because a lot of the grocery stores in town and drug stores used to get their freight that way because it was quicker, they could call in and if they could get the freight over to the freight house on North 7th Street by four o' clock, it would be here at six twenty, and that was about as quick as anything could be done. WE: When did they stop passenger service in Northfield? JM: On the M,N, and S in 1942, and then Rock Island, 1967. WE: 1967. Okay. I've talked to people here in Northfield that used to say they used to steal coal off of the trains to heat their homes. JM: Yes, during the Depression that was common. I know across from the foundry, there were a couple of families there, if the gondola came by with coal on it, they would get up on top and start throwing it off, that's the only way they had heat in the wintertime. There's several families, they're poorer families, that did that. WE: Was there a place in Northfield where they stored coal? JM: Oh yes, the Manhart Coal Company had a huge coal operation, they had I think four silos full of coal, and they had a winch system and a trolley system to load those things out of freight cars. They would dump them into a big bin down at the bottom, it would go in there, then they had this one mechanized bucket, maybe a couple yards of coal would be in it, it would go up and then across and dump into the silos and then they would load their truck out of the silo there. That was a pretty big operation, and that was Sam Manhart that owned that. He was a retired one-armed locomotive engineer off the Milwaukee Road, he lost his arm in a Fourth of July dynamite accident down in Owatonna, and then he came to Northfield and started the coal company. He also owned a steam car, I have parts of that steam car. WE: What do you call that thing where the train comes on—a roundhouse? JM: A turntable. There was a turntable in Northfield, right east of the current Malt-O-Meal plant two, where they park the cars and where also the railroad cars are parked, and that was used by all the railroads in town. I don't remember ever a Chicago Great Western locomotive being turned on there, but I remember a lot of Rock Island locomotives on there, because they would come up here from Manly, Iowa, which was a division point with the engine and caboose, which they called the caboose hop, and would turn the engine here and then take the cars from M, N, and S and take them south, because the trains coming through from the north were already overloaded. Of course you have to remember that this was the case during WWII, where Northfield was a very busy railroad terminal. I came back from lunch one time when I was helping Ted Carel down at the yard, I was just a little kid, I think I was in sixth grade or something like that, and I counted twelve engines, twelve locomotives in town, four of them being on two troop trains that went through, two double-header troop trains. They were moving a division from north to south somewhere, because the Rock Island catered to almost all the army bases in the central United States. WE: Could those guys get off the trains and go eat at the local areas? JM: Not here, not here in Northfield, no. WE: So would there be guys sitting on a train waiting for another engine to pull them someplace, the troop trains? JM: Not the troop trains, they went through in total, they were just going through. The thing is that the traffic through here was fantastic, back in '19 I have a clipping out of the paper that shows the Rock Island had fourteen passenger trains going through Northfield around WWI, and then they had cut down some, I think they were still doing something like eight during WWII, regular trains, and the Milwaukee Road had four trains, two each way, during the war, and of course M, N, and S up until 1942 had their train up and back every day. Prior to that, in the 1920s and early '30s, the M, N, and S used to run the Chicago Great Western passenger train down to Mankato from Randolph, because they held the mail contract, so they would haul mail from Randolph down to Mankato and hit all those towns, Waterville, Elysian, Morristown and all of them were all handled by railroad mail service, the M, N, and S and the numbers of the trains were forty-one and forty-two. Now there's a picture that exists down in the Mankato Historical Society which is kind of a strange one, because it shows the Minneapolis, Northfield, and Southern steam engine, number either two hundred or two hundred and one, switching in Mankato. Why, no one has been able to figure out, unless the Chicago Great Western borrowed that engine from the M, N, and S to do the work down there, because they had a bunch of industry down there, there was a big Hubbard mill down there that was on their line, you know, and grain milling and stuff like that. WE: Were all steam engines in use from 1864 to1944 all the same size? JM: No, there were all kinds of sizes, I don't know how many there were in the United States, but there must have been maybe as many as thirty different wheel arrangements, stuff like that, heavy-duty. The Duluth Mesabi Iron Range had some of the most powerful locomotives for hauling iron ore, built during the 1940s, and there's three that exist, one in the museum in Duluth, one in Two Harbors, and one in Proctor. I think the one in Proctor is still there next to the golf course. WE: How would you be able to, in size so we can understand it, how big was the biggest one, like, could I stand up in the chimney? Or the wheel, is that what you use for this? JM: Yes, the wheel. Most of your steam freight locomotives probably would have had wheels in the probably the fifty to sixty inch diameter, and your big fast passenger locomotives would probably get up to six foot diameter, driving wheels. And of course the nine ninety-nine on the New York Central set a record back in the 1890s of somewhere around a hundred and fifteen miles an hour. WE: Wow. JM: When the steam Hiawathas were running from Minneapolis—they never ran Hiawathas through here, Northfield, but they did run them down the river division to Chicago—those locomotives, they started building them in 1934, and they had a top speed of somewhere around a hundred and thirty miles an hour, and they used run that fast, because down by New Lisbon, off of wherever they have the little curve down there, they had a big sign up there for the locomotive engineers that used to say 'Reduce to Ninety.' They were running that fast. The subsequent Hiawathas using diesels, I think their top was probably sixty-nine or seventy-four miles an hour, something more in that area, and they were geared special for that. The freight locomotives were not geared that high. WE: What about cow-catchers? Were those a real thing? Is that was they were for? JM: Sure. Out west they used them a lot, on the early locomotives they were used quite a bit, because they used to run into buffalo and everything else out there, it was all open prairie. WE: So how were they designed to protect the train? Did they just scoop them up and throw them to the side? JM: Yes, it just knocked them over to the side. I have a friend of mine that was on the Northern Pacific when they still had steam, and my good friend John Debold from Northfield was a fireman on one of those too, but it wasn't the same deal. Anyways, he was coming down from Minneapolis and he was a fireman, this was right after the war, on the MP, and they got up there by Forest Lake or something and the engineer, before he left Duluth, read and said that around Forest Lake, watch out for the sheep on the line. The order came out at like six in the morning and here this was the afternoon train, so he figured well, there wouldn't be any sheep there. Well, they came around the corner there by Forest Lake and by golly the sheep got back on the track again and they hit a whole slug of them. He said that when they got into the St. Paul Union Station, people wouldn't even come within a block of the locomotive because it smelled so bad. He said they must have hit about five or six of them, they'd gotten back on the track, he said that was the biggest mess he ever saw. WE: It's twenty-five minutes after ten o' clock on KYMN Radio and we're talking to Jim Machacek, and we're going to come back, and my next question, Jim, after the break is going to be to name the different positions there are on a train, you mentioned fireman, I think of conductor, and of course there's an engineer, and we'll find out what all those things mean in just a moment. [Commercial 21:23 to 24:34] WE: We're back, on the Wayne Eddy Affair on KYMN Radio, ten twenty-nine the time, a beautiful day in the neighborhood. My guest this morning is a guy that's been in the neighborhood all of his life, Jim Machacek. He is a train devotee and has made it a point in his lifetime to learn as much as he could, experience as much as he can, and now we're going to get a lesson in what it was like to have been involved in the railroad back in old days, it may be applicable to some of the new days but in the old days. Jim, let's say during the Civil War or perhaps during the First or Second World War, how many different positions were there working on the railroad? I'll tell you what, the first time I ever heard of the expression 'feather-bedding,' the first time I ever heard 'feather-bedding,' it was applicable to a union story about the railroad, and then I learned what that was all about. JM: Well, the feather-bedding part, that came in later when the diesels came in, some of the early diesels had firemen on them of course but the firemen didn't do anything but watch for signals and things like that, and sometimes give relief to the engineer if he needed it because most of them were qualified engineers as well. But in the steam era, that was a little different thing, because on a steam freight train going someplace you would have the engineer, which on the right side of the cab he was a steam engineer, and on the left side of the cab you had the fireman, who took care of the water and the coal, and then you had a head-end brakeman. Now, the head-end brakeman usually sat on the fireman's side, either ahead or behind the fireman, on that side of the cab, but, for instance, the Minneapolis, Northfield, and Southern Railroad on their Russian Decopod locomotives had a doghouse on the tender. WE: On the Russian Decopod? That's a brand? JM: That was a style of locomotive that was used in the United States. There's a story behind them too, but anyway, on those locomotives, the M, N, and S had a doghouse on the tender behind the coal bunker. WE: Okay, what is a doghouse, a tender, and a coal bunker? JM: The tender is the car right behind the steam locomotive proper that hauls the coal and the water for the locomotive, and of course it's connected permanently, for the most part, to the locomotive, there's not a coupler between the two, there's a big piece of steel that holds those two together and in order to separate them you have to take all that out of there, big bolts and stuff like that. The doghouse is on top of the tender, behind the coal bunker, and that's where the head-end brakeman sometimes would go. There was heat in there and everything, because some railroads felt that they didn't have enough room in the cab and the head-end brakeman in the cab was a detriment. Well, on some railroads it was a positive, because some of those head-end brakemen were firemen too and if they got into trouble they'd have both the fireman and the head-end brakeman firing with two shovels, I'd say this in particular in the western United States or something like that, where there's a lot of mountains and stuff. WE: Now, just assume that there are people that don't understand what that means. You're literally shoveling coal from a storage area into a furnace, which creates heat, which heats water, which creates steam, which runs the locomotive. JM: That's right. WE: So when you say a fireman, you're talking about a guy that shovels coal? JM: That's right, he's the fireman. WE: That sounds like a real nice name for a pretty laborious job. JM: Well, yes, but there were some guys that were pretty sharp at that too, there were people on the M, N, and S railway that I knew that did not want to be engineers, they stayed as firemen,, and these were old-timers, because they didn't want the responsibility. You would have found that also when you look at the rear of the train. There used to be a caboose back there, and the caboose would contain the rear-end brakeman and the conductor. The conductor of course was in charge of the train. The engineer was the second-in-command of the train. WE: Oh, I always thought a conductor was just like a waiter. JM: No, on a passenger train of course you would have the fireman, the engineer in the cab, and you would not have a head-end brakeman, because the brakeman or trainman handle the cars behind and act like a conductor in picking up tickets and some things like that, depending upon how long the train was. Now, for instance, if you had a Pullman car in a passenger train, that had its own Pullman conductor, and he ran the car himself. WE: What's a Pullman? JM: Pullman is a semi-luxury car that would have staterooms on it, you could sleep on that, they'd make bunks for you, and you also could use it for a sitting room and you could have privacy if you wanted. They had staterooms and they had double bunks and they had all kinds of things. WE: So one person would control that whole car? JM: Right. And then probably with the conductor there might be a porter as well. A lot of your black population in St. Paul came from railroads, because they were all porters, or some of them were even Pullman conductors. WE: A porter is...? JM: A porter is a person that makes up the beds, just generally cleans everything, but very qualified. WE: I just happened to think, when you say 'conductor,' if you think of the word 'conductor,' like conducting an orchestra.... JM: Same deal. WE: Okay, I thought it was just the guy that walked around and punched the ticket. JM: Nope. And then you had some guys that were just called trainmen too, and they were kind of third class or below them, and they would help the conductor. It all depends on how long the train was, because they had to have service and everything. Of course, like I say, the conductor on a passenger train was the man, and if anything happened, if the conductor got sick or something, why then the engineer was automatically the head man. WE: So going back to the freight train, you talked about a front brakeman and a back brakeman? JM: Right, yes, you had two brakemen on the old freight trains, yes. WE: And there was no communication between the two? Or did they use lancets or flags or...? JM: After WWII, they started using radios. Prior to that it was whistle signals or something like that. They had a regular set of whistle signals, for bringing in the brakemen, for getting ready to go, two toots to go, one toot to stop. Then they had crossing whistles, and then if they brought a brakeman in from east or north or whatever it was, that would be five shorts on the whistle and that would bring him in, if he was protecting the train, say if they got stopped someplace and he had to go back and flag a train behind him, or whatever, if they were in what might be called dark territory where there were no signals. Northfield was dark for a long time until WWII and the Rock Island, and of course now it's all governed by signals, I don't think they use running orders anymore. WE: So what would be the longest freight train back during the 1900s? JM: Well, if you want to take WWII, I know the M, N, and S would usually run probably not over seventy cars, probably around four thousand ton, four to five thousand ton. WE: And in the steam engine era, you only pulled, you didn't have anybody pushing? JM: Oh yes, out in the coal country in Virginia and places like that, sometimes they'd have two engines, two big engines up front and one engine behind, all Malleys or double engines, they were, and they would move along at not over ten miles an hour, pushing the stuff over the mountains. The big locomotives for the most part were out there. WE: So they pulled and pushed? JM: Pulled and pushed both. WE: Even with steam engines? JM: Even with steam, yes. WE: So there's a reverse? JM: Yes. WE: Is that all you do, is just push a knob and you're in reverse? JM: Well, you have a reverse gear in there that goes back and forth. WE: What do you call that long rod that is attached to the wheel that turns the wheel? JM: Those are connecting rods. WE: Do those go backwards, then? JM: Oh yes. They'll run either direction. Now in Europe, they didn't turn the steam locomotives like they do here, they would run the tender first in a lot of cases, even on fast passenger trains. WE: Run what? JM: The tender first, they had the coal car first. And they had locomotives over there that had just one frame, and the tender was mounted right on the main frame, and those were called tank engines, or tender engines. WE: How many gallons of water would you take on? JM: I think most of them had at least twelve thousand. WE: How long would that last? Did you measure it in miles or hours or...? JM: Yes, they could, I don't remember, but I know when they came down from Minneapolis they had a water spigot in Lakeville which they didn't have to use, but they would use the one in Northfield all the time. All the railroads used the one in Northfield, I even saw a Chicago Great Western engine run short of water and have to come over to the M, N, and S spigot. They'd have to cross the main line of the Rock Island Milwaukee to get over there. But they were doing some work, maybe track work or something, and they came over. Now, the M, N, and S in Lakeville had a coal tipple, and that's where they used to get their coal. There used to be a coal dock here in Northfield on the Milwaukee road, but it was gone before I remember it. It does show on some of the old pictures. WE: So that was a well-fed tank? JM: Oh yes. Well, the Minneapolis, Northfield, and Southern water spigot was hooked right on to the main water lines in Northfield, and it had enough capacity, because they always had enough capacity in Northfield. Most of the M, N, and S engines anyway always got water in Northfield. They could get some in Randolph too if they had to. WE: Well, when the spigot was being used to put water into the tender, were people told not to flush their toilets at that time or anything? JM: Oh no, they had plenty of water. Northfield had a very good water department here, years ago, so they never had any trouble there. WE: What would today's people say about the old coal-burning steam engines and the soot that came up from them? JM: Well, they would probably complain about it, but some of the later engines had situations where there was hardly any black smoke at all. In a lot of the later engines that were running, like the ones that will run, for instance, a two sixty-one which is going to run to Chicago this fall, down the Mississippi River, they make the black smoke mostly just for people to take pictures of, but they can run almost smokeless if they want to because they can adjust the fire and the air situation to get rid of that, so it's not like it used to be, unless you're using Iowa coal. Iowa coal smokes regardless of what you do with it, because I fired Iowa coal down in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, and it was lots of burn, lots of smoke, and no heat. WE: And that's bad coal. JM: That's bad coal. WE: That's worse than North Dakota. JM: Well, it's that type, it's a low-grade coal down there. WE: Is that more like a shale? JM: No, I don't know, it's just a poor grade. I know, for instance, I'm an engineer on the Midwest Central in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, it's a three-foot gauge railroad on the old thresher's place, and when we get coal from Illinois, which is across the river, it's usually pretty good, we don't have any trouble. But if somebody brings over—I mean, there's a few people down in Iowa that still have coal mines on their farms, and they'll bring a few loads of that in, you know, and in Burlington, Iowa we cleaned out a bunch of basements that were full of coal, and got it all to burn there because they changed over to gas or something else to burn with. That stuff from Illinois was quite good, had a lot of heat in it. WE: Are steam engines, locomotives, are they a thing of the past? JM: There's a lot of tourist railroads still running them. As far as main line steam, not in the United States. There are a few running in China yet, there's a few running in Poland, and I think in Africa there are a few. Now Africa has a situation where they don't have coal, and they use eucalyptus chunks, and down there in the Zimbabwe railroads, the eucalyptus down there grows faster than they can burn it, so they sell it to the locals down there when they have a surplus. They run the steam locomotives with eucalyptus wood. WE: Many years ago, we rode the train from St. Paul down to Northfield as members of the James Younger gang, and we robbed the train in Farmington, and we also did something here in Northfield too, and I think Garrison Keillor was on that train that time. Did you put that together, or did Clark Webster, or who did that? JM: It was a joint venture with the Jesse James Committee and Minnesota Transportation Museum, which I was a member of at that time. I might have had something to do with it as well, but it actually was the early bunch, because Frank Sandburg I think was the president of Minnesota Transportation Museum, who is Steve Sandburg's father, and Steve is the one that runs the two sixty-one for the most part, their family does. I think Frank was head of it then, because that was in the 1970s. And the last one that came into town was 1980 for Carleton College, that was a three twenty-eight also, the same engine, that engine is tied up now because it needs boiler work, and so it hasn't run for several years. But the three twenty-eight came down for Carleton College and I was in charge of that one because I was a member of the Minnesota Transportation Museum and I had to arrange everything on this end for it, and that was a successful one, some of the Carleton alumni that were railroad nuts got that thing together, and they used some Northern Pacific cars, if I'm not mistaken. WE: I didn't realize at the time what a big deal that was, and when I say big deal I'm talking about the work effort to get it done, but I do know that it was superbly popular, you gave rides to Dundas and back, or Randolph and back— JM: Comus. We went to Comus. Comus is three miles south of Dundas. That's where the two railroads split, the Rock Island goes to the east and the Milwaukee goes to the west. WE: Did you have to ask some railroad line not to use that line that weekend? JM: Oh, we had it all set up with the Milwaukee Road, yes. I forget the guy's name, he was one of the traveling engineers and he was in charge of it here. WE: Did that disrupt their business? JM: No, no, we were running around their trains. WE: Okay, so did you pull it off on the side and then let their trains go by? JM: Yes, there's sidings in town where we can do that, or go into the yard, the yard has got all kinds of room down there. WE: Could that ever be done again? JM: Well, it's possible, but the only operating locomotive in Minnesota right now is a two sixty-one, which is a pretty big locomotive. I'm sure that it would go, because it's been running on Burlington Northern, Santa Fe, and some of the other lines. They're going to be running this fall, and they ran this summer a couple of times. In fact they ran to Duluth this year with it. WE: Is there a huge cost involved? JM: Yes, it has to pay off somehow, I mean, there is money involved. I don't know what the current charges would be. WE: But people like yourself that volunteer your expertise, you don't get compensated monetarily, do you? JM: No. The only ones that get compensated are the people that are running a two sixty-one, because they're running twelve, fourteen car trains and they're selling out. I know that, for instance, from Minneapolis down to Winona and back is probably ninety-nine dollars or something like that. They have to make it pay off. WE: Minneapolis to Winona? That's a heck of a trip. JM: Well, it is, and it's down and back, that's the cheap one, and then I think if you want to go first class is one ninety-nine and if you want to go fancy class I think it's probably two ninety-nine, but that's just relative. WE: So there evidently is a kitchen on that train. JM: There is an eating facility, yes, I mean a concession stand. WE: Well, for two ninety-nine.... JM: I think in the higher classes there is a meal involved. WE: So, what would it take to get the train down here again? I mean, you agree it was very successful and monetarily beneficial? JM: Oh yes. I mean, you'd have to do a lot of work. We had it set up here a couple years ago for the Sesquicentennial—or no, that was last year. It was one of those things. We had it set up but we couldn't get approval from the Union Pacific Railroad, which has the line, we were going to run from Northfield to Randolph, and Progressive Rail, the people with the blue engines in town, they were going to donate a locomotive to run it. WE: Well, now's the time to do that if they want to get some good PR. JM: Oh yes. But everybody's so busy right now. I mean, there's a lack of locomotives, there's a lack of cars and everything like that, I just counted one of the coal trains that goes through here last week, I got stopped by one and that one had a hundred and thirteen cars on it. WE: That's a lot? JM: Well, that's for a coal train, that's about right now, that was a Northern States Power train. WE: I'm going to take a break, Jim, and when we come back, tell me how, when some of the trains go through here, we see graffiti all over them, and where is that coming from and what's the story behind that? We'll be back in just a moment. [Commercial 44:59 to 47:47] WE: Oh yes, another KYMN classic, 'Lonesome Loser' by the Little River Band from 1979. Jim Machacek is my guest here on KYMN Radio and we are talking choo-choo trains. I suppose they got the name from the fact that it went choo, choo. JM: That's right, yes. WE: My question was, sometimes you can watch a train go through Northfield, and if you're in a car waiting to cross the tracks it takes forever, and if you're a devotee of trains you look at every single one of those cars, count them, so what's the story with all this graffiti all over these cars? JM: Well, most of this graffiti as far as I can determine comes from out east, like I know Progressive Rail, the guys with the blue cars, have been sending a lot of stuff for Faribault Foods out all over the country and it comes back with graffiti on it. Well, I don't know, there's supposed to be a law against it and all this and that, but it's been so much a part of railroading for the last few years that now on the model trains you can buy graffiti to put on your little cars. WE: Oh, for gosh sakes. JM: I mean, people want to be up to date, you know. I don't know, I don't care for it, but there are some terrific artists in there and of course there's a lot been written about some of this graffiti that you see, some of it maybe has been a little hard to take but nonetheless there's been some very interesting things. I had a chance to watch a slow-moving train that had a bunch of graffiti on it and I was looking at it, and you know, there's some artists there. In some places they've been trying to curtail the purchase of spray cans of paint, in some areas where they've had this trouble, I don't know how successful they've been with that. WE: So tell me, how in the world did people like Jesse James rob a train? JM: Well, you know, the trains didn't run that fast in those days, and I think a horse could come up to them and maybe equal the speed of a train. WE: Well, you see that in the movies. JM: You could jump on then, and things like that, or place a bunch of ties or wood on the track and start it on fire, you know, and then the engineer would normally shut off and come to a halt. WE: But you know that 'Holy cow, maybe somebody's going to rob us.' Did they have gunners on those trains? JM: Well, in some cases I think they did, when they were hauling payrolls and things like that they did, and then people like Union Pacific, when they were building their railroads, they had armed guards on their payroll cars and stuff like that, but I mean, that would only be natural. Then the people, if they wanted to rob a bunch of passengers, I don't think they'd get a heck of a lot of money but it's the payrolls and the gold shipments they were after. You get in remote areas, there's nobody around. I think that Jesse James and then they had these guys from southern Minnesota that they did that picture of, I can't remember their last names.... WE: Dalton brothers? JM: No, the author wrote a story, Jack What's-his-name. WE: Koblas? JM: Koblas, yes, he wrote a story on them, they even did a movie in town on that, years ago, about five, six years ago. Then the one of those guys that was in that group, I can't remember their names, it was something like Sogrin but I don't want to get Sogrins, it was similar to that. WE: It wasn't Roger? [Laughs] JM: It wasn't Roger, no. But anyway, he was at Fulsome Penitentiary, one of these desperadoes, in California, and he broke out and they shot him with a Gatling gun, one of the first people ever shot with a Gatling gun was right around 1900 or something like that, which has got a historical place in time. So anyway, of course there was money concentrated on a train because there'd be a lot of people together, traveling guys, you didn't have credit cards and stuff in those days so you had to carry your own cash with you, or checks or something. I suppose there was always a possibility. WE: What's the longest train ride you ever took? JM: Probably, well, on one car from St. Paul Union Depot to Detroit. WE: Oh, that isn't that far. JM: No. In a private car, though, all the way, and back. WE: Whose car? JM: It belongs to a pilot for United Airlines, I believe, and he rents it out. Our railroad club about twenty years ago got it and there was an opening on it so Marilyn and I went. We stayed overnight in Chicago at a hotel, got back on the train, went to Detroit, went to the Ford Museum for about three hours, went back on the train, stayed overnight in Chicago again, and came back. It was the Sierra Hotel was what it was called, very nice, it had room for about twenty-one or twenty-two people on it, and also had a cook on it, so the meals where fantastic. WE: What's the name of the guy from Carleton that has his own? JM: Dante Stevenson. It's a Survivor. That was Betty Hutton's car. Betty Hutton and Cary Grant used to go across the country int hat car back in the thirties. WE: He invited me aboard, I did an interview with him, and it was pretty neat. JM: He lives in that full-time, down in Atlanta he has a siding of his own, he has that car and another car, he has another Pullman on there so in case he gets friends staying overnight, why they bunk up in the Pullman car. He owns Dante's Down the Hatch.... WE: Underground. JM: Underground, yes, great place to eat. WE: Point number two, we're almost done here, we never got to your own private railroad so we'll have to come back and learn about that. Somebody wants me to be sure to ask you how you got your locomotive to the US, well, that'll be another story because we'll get it in detail, but before we leave, what was the most scenic railroad ride that you ever had? Was it here, or in Europe? JM: Well, I guess there were three of them: the Cumbres and Toltec in Colorado, the Durango and Silverton in Colorado, and the Rhaetian Bahn in Switzerland. The Rhaetian Bahn is a narrow gauge that goes across southern Switzerland from Zermatt to St. Moritz, and that was fantastic, and that was all modern on that, that was electric. WE: And that's uphill. JM: Well, it's uphill and downhill, fantastic. WE: I've seen some specials, on Channel 2 I think it was, on train rides, you know, and you just go, 'My god.' JM: There's four railroads that are all hooked together, they're all narrow gauge, they're meter gauge is what they are, 39.39 inches, and all modern, and in the end of each car they have about six feet for people to put their skis on, so you don't have to carry the skis into the main part. WE: Well, Jim, we're out of time, but we'll figure out a time to have you come back, all right? JM: All right. WE: I really enjoy this. It's my pleasure. Thank you very much, Jim Machacek, on KYMN Radio, tomorrow C. C. Linstroth after we talk to the reigning royalty from the Defeat of Jesse James Days. Have a great day. [Transcribed 2014 by Emilee Martell for the Northfield Historical Society.] |
| Language | eng |
| CDM Modified Note | 2013_machacek_10 |
Description
| Title | Wayne Eddy Affair interview with Jim Machacek, August 16, 2007, part 2 |
| Creator | KYMN Radio |
| Description | Wayne Eddy Affair interview with Jim Machacek, August 16, 2007, part 2, on KYMN Radio. |
| Date of Creation | 8/16/2007 |
| Minnesota Reflections Topic | Communication |
| Item Type | Sound Recording - Nonmusical |
| Item Physical Format | Broadcasts |
| Locally Assigned Subject Headings | Businesses |
| Minnesota City or Township | Northfield |
| Minnesota County | Rice |
| Contributing Institution | KYMN Radio: 200 Division St. S., Suite 260, Northfield, MN, 55057. http://kymnradio.net. Note that item is housed at the Northfield Historical Society, www.northfieldhistory.org. |
| Rights Management | This image may not be reproduced for any reason without the express written consent of KYMN Radio, http://kymnradio.net |
| NHC File Name | 2007_08_16_2_machacek_jim |
| Collection Title | Northfield History Collaborative |
| Language | eng |
| CDM Modified Note | 2013_machacek_10 |