The Waukon & Mississippi Railroad

The Waukon & Mississippi Railroad connected Waukon, IA with the Milwaukee Road at Waukon Junction on the Mississippi River. Originally a narrow-gauge railway, it would later be re-gauged when operations were assumed by the Milwaukee Road. It first opened in 1875, after construction was completed along the very difficult and rough terrain, which included a climb of over 600 feet throughout the route, with construction being completed in 1877. (Right of Way)

From IAGenWeb, "The "Narrow" Comes In - Above is a photo of the "Union Prairie," first train to enter Waukon on the narrow gauge. This event took place on Oct. 27, 1877, and hundreds of Waukon people were at the station to meet it. The "narrow gauge" railroad is still in operation, running from Waukon to Marquette, its train carrying passengers as well as every kind of freight. (Telegraph-Herald, Dubuque, IA, July 2, 1944)"

"The Waukon narrow gauge railroad was built for both political and commercial reasons. Waukon, as the county seat was being threatened by Lansing. Lansing wanted a vote on moving the county seat from Waukon, saying Lansing had the advantage of being located on the Mississippi River, and was served by a branch of the Chicago, Clinton, Dubuque & Minnesota Railroad. Waukon unfortunately had attracted no early railroad development due to its geographic location, the terrain between Waukon and the Mississippi River being the steepest of any along the Iowa bank of the river. For this reason, Waukon businessmen envisioned that a narrow gauge railroad could be built." (IAGenWeb)

In Waukon, the railway was the only connection for the independent Mississippi Valley Iron Company Railroad to connect to the rest of the US railroad network. 

"Mississippi Valley Iron Co. Waukon, IA, X2496" (could be 12496). This was an iron ore beneficiation mill built in 1913 by the Missouri Iron Company just north of Waukon, Iowa to process limonite ore. Another photo of the same plant is given in the Iowa Geological Survey Annual Report for 1914, page 85, along with a description of the mine and mill, and the 1930's USDA orthophotos show the mill buildings shortly before their demolition. (Wikipedia Commons)

Lansing still fought to become the county seat, to no avail. In 1880, the Milwaukee Road purchased the right of way, with the Chicago, Clinton, Dubuque & Minnesota Railway operating the route for a short time in between. Due to the rough terrain the road was built on, freight rates were slightly higher on this line than the typical part of the Milwaukee system. Nonetheless, in spite of the challenges, the line survived longer than many other short lines, finally ending service in 1960, and fully abandoned ten years later.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Choum Tunnel: The Monument to European Stupidity in Africa

Image
Scars of European colonization are located all across Africa, although some are more obscure and strange than others. With that in mind we come to the Choum Tunnel , built in Mauritania when it was controlled by the French. At first glance, it seems like an ordinary railway tunnel, however, one look at the local geography and you'll find yourself asking what its builders were possibly thinking with creating the project. Choum Tunnel in Mauritania. Unknown photographer. The Mauritania Railway was being built in the early 1960s, and was planned to connect Nouadhibou to Zouérat to exploit the iron ore reserves at Zouérat. That route still exists today in largely its original state, with the exception of the tunnel. Image: Ammar Hassan via Atlas Obscura The easiest route required running a short section of track through the then-Spanish controlled Western Sahara , but rather than pay Spain for the land and other concessions, the French engineers instead chose to tunnel under a hill sp
Read more

Railroad Vocabulary: A List of Words and Phrases Used in the Industry - Updated February 2024

Image
As somebody who enjoyed watching trains, but was not an employee of the railroad industry ( at least growing up ), when I would interact with railfans and historians, there was often a lot of technical jargon that applied only to the railroad industry thrown back and forth that made it difficult for a newcomer to understand what they were talking about. For example, what is a dinky? It's actually a passenger train. This non-inclusive language seems to keep the loop closed to members of the community, and to uncouple (no pun intended) that technical jargon and help make it easier for people to communicate with people in the industry, I am creating a list of railroad vocabulary that I'm hoping will make the industry more transparent.  BNSF 2361 . Image: Matt Flores While I ultimately believe that such technical jargon has no place outside of perhaps technical communications between employees, I know quite well that I alone am not going to stop people from communicating in a non-i
Read more

We asked ChatGPT to write an article on Abandoned Railroads - Here's the Result

Image
We live in an incredibly interesting age of information - made even more interesting by one of the most advanced chatbots that exist. Chatbots have been around for awhile now, but there are very few that have captured the amount of information and artificial intelligence that have been shown by ChatGPT . To demonstrate this, I asked it to write me an article on abandoned railroads with 1200 words in it. After this paragraph, you'll see what ChatGPT wrote. I will provide relevant links in its paragraphs and make any errors that I can see in brackets "[]". What I've noticed is that ChatGPT is great when it comes to general ideas about a particular historical topic, but largely gets facts, dates, and context wrong. Thus, we're still a little ways away from being taken over by computer overlords . Otherwise, thanks as always for reading my material, the rest is by guest blogger ChatGPT! Abandoned railroads are railways that are no longer in use or service. This can ha
Read more