Fort Dodge, Iowa
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Fort Dodge photos from the Don Vaughn photo collection
Don Hofsommer photo from Don Vaughn collection
The M&StL in Fort Dodge, Iowa 1954
From M&StL Yahoo! Groups List: Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003
From: "Kurt Stoebe" Subject: Ft Dodge depot
The line running north from Ft. Dodge to Albert Lea was originally the Ft. Dodge and Ft. Ridgley. It was a thinly financed local road which made it as far LuVerne where it linked with M&STL coming south. It apparently was always intended as a candidate for sale to the M&STL. I understand that it had a wooden depot in the Soldier Creek valley directly north of the square. The road up the hill is a city street and it is very steep. Supposedly, it lasted as part of a local business into the 1960's.
I have a passenger schedule board from the IC depot in Ft Dodge which shows the M&STL trains. Inexplicably, it shows a departure of one train which terminated in Ft Dodge. At some point, there was a need to show a departure to another location in Ft Dodge, but where is unknown. KURT STOEBE
From M&StL Yahoo! Groups List: Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003
08:28:15 -0500
From: dholmes@luverne.k12.ia.us
Subject: Fort Dodge depots
The M&StL did indeed have a psgr station in Fort Dodge and perhaps two. In A.P. Butts' book on the Fort Dodge street railway, he mentions that the street cars connected the three depots: The MC&FD, IC. and M&StL. It appears as though the station that he referred to was located just south and perhaps a wee west of the IC round house.
I've also been told that the office bldg in the 200 block of Central Ave was once used as a psgr station with two stub tracks on the east side for use of passengers. That building is still there and is being used by a local business. IIRC the Louis started using the IC depot around the turn of the century.
The station building that Curt Stoebe mentions was located NW of Corpus Christi church down in the valley. Perhaps it was the FtD and Ft Ridgely. This line made it across the Humboldt Co. line just in the nick of time to get a gov't subsidy. I believe a hand car was used as the first "train". The line north of Ft. Dodge was somewhat serpentine....the reason: to hit as many townships as they could in order to qualify for the subsidy. The Ft. D & Ft.R connected with the Minnesota & Iowa Southern south of LuVerne and all became part of the line from Mpls-Albert Lea-Angus line. -Dennis E
Fri, 16 Nov 2001 From: Dennis Holmes - dholmes@luverne.k12.ia.us
Subject: Ft. Dodge roundhouse & office
While reading a Nov. 1959 issue of the Switch Lamp (publication of the Iowa Chapter NRHS) the editor Basil Koob of Ft. Dodge relates the following news:
The old red wooden M&StL roundhouse in Fort Dodge (or what was left of it) has been replaced by a new, modern one-story brick structure which will house all the railroad's operations at this terminal. This means the division office building at 204 Main, (Central) , Fort Dodge, will be vacated entirely and taken over by trucking and beer distributing concerns. This is what the swivel chair set likes to call progress. But we can remember the day when the lights burned 24 hours around the clock at 204 Main, the freight house was never closed, the dispatcher's office was like a bee hive and they could look out the west windows and see M&StL trains going by night and day. Those were the days when the M&StL had 10 passenger trains in and out of Fort Dodge daily and almost as many freight trains. The days of real railroading are gone.
[Pictures of this roundhouse and the building at 204 main while in actual use by the M&StL are hard to come by. I have a slide of an RS-1 outside the roundhouse and it looks like part of the walls were brick. It has to be at Ft.Dodge as the Great Western bridge is in the photo also.] Dennis
Taken from the March 19, 1901 Fort Dodge Messenger.
Ever since Sunday a force of 50 men, consisting of a gang of the workmen of the Detroit Bridge Works and a number of the employees of the Minneapolis & St Louis Railway, have been engaged in a desperate struggle to save the Des Moines river bridge from the enormous weight of ice which was piled up aginst the frail false work upon which the structure rested.
Their efforts have been successful, and today with the ice apparently all gone from the river, except a few scattered pieces, the bridge stands intact, the loss of the false work from under one span being all the damage which it has sustained. For a time however, it appeared that nothing could save the bridge and that a loss of many thousands of dollars threatened the company.
The great masses of ice swipt down the river with terrible force, and had it not been for the precautions previously taken by the bridge workers, the great structure would have been swept away like a bridge of straw. In expectation of the coming of the ice, the men had erected a row of piling standing above the bridge and placed so as to protect the piers. The fragments of ice were caught by these piles and thus prevented from coming with full force against the frail false work which supported the bridge.
The ice came so fast however, and in such great quantities that it was soon seen that it would not be long before it would sweep over the barrier that had been raised against it, and the use of dynamite was found necessary. The bridge workers would go out on the great piles of ice, place the charge of explosive in position, adjust and light the fuse, and would be back on shore before the explosion occurred, tearing the great cakes into small pieces which drifted harmlessly down past the bridge
[My guess is that this was during construction of the "new" bridge" Dennis Holmes]
From a retired M&StL conductor 4/2003
As I look at your site I think about the funny things that took place when I was on M&STL.
Once I was on train 50 from Albert Lea as conductor. Roy Gamper was engineer. Coming in to Fort Dodge yards from the caboose I noticed we were going a little fast. We had good size train. Engineers generally started setting the air when we got to yard. Roy was a person who had land marks for when he started drawing air off as we came in to towns. In Fort Dodge he used a snow plow that sat in same the same place at the west end of the yards for years and never moved from that spot. That trip the switch engine had moved the plow to the far end of the yard. Roy never set the air till we got to the plow. We tore the switches out on the far end of the yard that were lined wrong. Ran 20 cars past the end of yard.
At investigation Roy told the trainmaster it was the switch crew's fault because they moved the plow. No one was pulled out of service. I think it was to hilarious what took place and why. Plus the fact the M&STL had good people as supervisors train masters and crews out of Fort Dodge. The section crews fixed the switches in a few hours. Rowdy Walker was the section foreman . You would never find a better person than Rowdy and his crew.
Just a story for you to understand why M&STL was such a great place to work. Just wanted to tell you about this so you could see why I am glad you are keeping the M&STL alive in memory of those who are no longer with us. And to see why it was a great place to work. It was a sad day for us when the merger came with C.N.W. M&STL was like family. Sad day on all rail roads when mergers started and rails were tore out. One day they will see the mistake.
We had an old joke in train service about the new Brakeman. Since you have plenty of knowledge about trains I am sure you are aware at times we had air hoses on cars not long enough to couple 2 cars so you had to carry a dummy hose to put between them on the engine or caboose so you could make a connection. It had female end on both ends. The conductor told a new brakeman go up to engine get the dummy . The new brakeman went up tapped the engineer on shoulder told him "Conductor wants you." Might have been the same engineer on that Engine. Just kidding . Most of us always had a good relationship between engine and train crews. Years back, they never did and even when I hired out at first. On some jobs head end and train crews never spoke to each other unless they had to.
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