The past and future of No. 305

By Janet Jacobs

July 19, 2008 09:02 pm

— The 95-year-old Interurban railcar No. 305 is headed back to Corsicana in the next couple of weeks, but its future is still uncertain.
The city will fetch the car and its various bits and pieces with two flatbed trucks on or about Aug. 1, said City Manager Connie Standridge. At first, it will be put into storage to keep it safe from vandals, she said.
Photos taken last week show the car is an empty shell, lacking interior fixtures and seats, as well as some exterior parts, despite four years with specialty restorers at the Edwards Rail Car Company, in Montgomery, Ala. The owner of the company, Steve Torrico, said he underbid the project and then ran out of money to finish the work. However, when warned back in March that the city was impatient for its railcar, he again made promises of finishing, which didn’t happen. Three separate deadlines were set this year, the final one being July 15.
The Interurban No. 305 was built in 1913 by the St. Louis Car Company. It carried passengers between Corsicana and Dallas until the line closed in 1941. The car was transferred to the Waco-Dallas line until 1948, when that line was also closed, the result of a boom in personal car ownership and new highway construction. In 2002, the Interurban was rediscovered in a Granbury mobile home park, where it was being used as a house.
In 2003, the city dedicated $200,000 of hotel/motel tax money to restoring the car, and building a protective pavilion over it. The Edwards Rail Car Company was paid $153,428, according to the contract. There is still slightly more than $46,000 in the fund, but that money is meant for the construction of the pavilion, Standridge said.
There are some reserves in the hotel/motel tax fund which could be used to complete the project, according to Paul Hooper, executive director of the Corsicana/Navarro Chamber of Commerce. State law forbids using that money for anything except tourism-related projects or historical preservation, but an antique railcar would qualify as both.
“They’d have to submit a grant to the Corsicana Development Corporation board,” Hooper said. “It would be up to the full board.”
If it’s a great deal of money, the board may choose not to fund it all, forcing supporters to find additional money and prove their seriousness, Hooper said.
“It tells us they’re actively out there working to make it happen,” he said.

Off the rails
Antique train and trolley restoration is often done by amateurs with a few basic skills and a passion for trains, according to Jerry Burford with the Texas State Railroad.
“You need a carpenter and welder, and somebody with some common sense,” Burford said. “We restore our own stuff here, and we have no special expertise.”
The Texas State Railroad, which takes tourists between Rusk and Palestine, has used professionals assisted by volunteers to restore both locomotives and passenger cars.
“We just figure out what we want it to look like and we make it look pretty much original,” Burford explained.
John Landrum is the CEO of the transit authority which operates the McKinney Avenue trolley system in Dallas. Skilled amateurs could restore the No. 305, he said.
“Several of us volunteered and restored the Interurban up in Plano,” he said. The project cost about $100,000. “It’s a static display, it’s not ever going to go anywhere, but it’s a good-looking car, and of course, the city spent a lot of money restoring the Interurban station and making it an outstanding museum.”
Landrum offered to come to Corsicana with some fellow volunteers and give the city an assessment of the No. 305.
Texas also has professional restorers who specialize in train renovations, one of which is Harold Schroeder, owner of TrainsTexas Rails, a 30-year-old company in San Antonio, which specializes in transforming train cars into recreational vehicles on rails.
To reconstruct a car costs between $50,000 and $150,000, Schroeder said. He also offered to come to Corsicana to give the city a quote.
The Museum of the American Railroad in Dallas uses skilled amateurs and volunteers, guided by exact specifications and paid contractors, according to Bob LaPrelle, chief executive officer.
“That’s pretty specialized work,” LaPrelle said. “But if you can get people who are skilled and experienced in that type of work you can certainly accomplish it, whether it’s volunteers or contractors. It’s certainly possible to do it.”
He recommended finding an expert to create specifications and oversee the work.
“If you just put a local group on it, you do run the risk of denigrating the artifact, so to speak,” he said.
It could prove worthwhile, if done properly, LaPrelle said.
“It’s part of your history and your heritage,” he said. “It if it’s displayed right and accessible to people, and the interpretation ties into your local history, it can be an attraction, certainly. Heritage tourism is pretty big in Texas.”

Other towns, other cars
Texas has half a dozen antique working railroads, nine train museums, and 16 restored train depots. Some towns have only one train car on display, and Interurban cars, which qualify as quasi-trolley cars, are even rarer. The restored No. 360 is in Plano, and Burleson has the No. 330, while Van Alstyne is said to have two unrestored cars.
Jefferson was at one time a crucial economic link between New Orleans and the rest of the growing nation until trains replaced riverboats. Ironically, the town has the restored private train car of Jay Gould, the 19th-century financier, whose trains helped finish riverboats.
Gould’s 20-ton train car, named the Atalanta, was found decades ago in a pasture near Henderson, and rescued by the women of the Jessie Allen Wise Garden Club, who also renovated the town’s historic hotel, explained Juanita Wakefield-Chitwood, with the Jefferson Office of Tourism Development.
Karl Frederickson is the manager of the Excelsior House Hotel and the Atalanta Railroad Car for the garden club.
“It’s very popular,” Frederickson said of the Atalanta. “We use it as a focus for all things Jefferson, whether it’s a discussion of railroads, the Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, or the substitution of the railroad economy for the riverboat economy.”
Virtually on the other side of the state from Jefferson is tiny Van Horn in Culberson County, two counties east of El Paso. Van Horn has a 1944 Union Pacific train caboose that sits on the city hall lot, but it isn’t attracting a lot of visitors. With no money to spend on the project, the glass is broken out of the windows and no one has been inside it in about five years, according to Brenda Hinojos at the Van Horn Visitors and Convention Center.
“We haven’t done anything with it,” she said. “I guess they’re just going to leave it original.”
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Janet Jacobs may be reached via e-mail at jacobs@corsicanadailysun.com

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