Letter to the Editor: Some ideas on saving the CC railroad depot

By Jeff Bergstrom, Charles City

Concerning the fate of the Milwaukee Road Depot on North Grand Avenue, here in Charles City:

I am a longtime Canadian Pacific, Soo Line, Milwaukee Road employee and worked out of this depot many times on the section crew. I also worked for the Charley Western and several other railroads and on the old Star Clipper dinner train.

The newly formed passenger train museum group, American Passenger Train History Museum, headed by its president, Robert Moen, should buy the depot from Canadian Pacific Railroad and give the CP Railway an affidavit which frees the railroad of any legal responsibility of the depot or the property around it that the group buys from them.

This way the group and its sponsors would not have to pay anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000 to move the depot a couple of blocks south of its present site on North Grand Avenue, next to or near the Charley Western’s old Interurban Streetcar Depot on North Grand Avenue.

The old Milwaukee Road depot passenger station in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, still stands complete, next to the Canadian Pacific Railway’s main line. It is now a restaurant with a railroad theme with a Canadian Pacific railroad passenger car in its parking lot on display there.

It’s in the center of downtown Oconomowoc, and freight trains go by the depot at a fast rate of speed on the busy CP east-west main line between Minneapolis and Chicago, and two Amtrak trains, one eastbound and one westbound, go past the depot daily, seven days a week. Patrons are eating in the depot restaurant while trains are going by.

My point is, this depot was bought by its owners from the railroad, and they gave the railroad an affidavit freeing the railroad from legal liability and lawsuits and its new owners did not have to spend thousands of their dollars to move that Milwaukee Road depot to another location. The old Soo Line RR agreed to accept this agreement with the new owners of the depot.

Leaving the Charles City depot where it is would still fulfill its role as a passenger train depot, as Milwaukee Road passenger trains stopped here from the time the Milwaukee Road came to Charles City until the last passenger train through here in early 1961. Railway Express Agency still had its office in the west end of the depot for quite a while after 1961, for LCL Railway shipments out of Charles City.

The Milwaukee Road depot survived a 1968 tornado that went right by it in the street next to it on North Grand Avenue, almost unscathed. The tornado’s funnel went by the depot’s brick canopy by only 10 feet and that’s a fact. It goes to show how well built this 1912 Milwaukee Road depot really is!

The Passenger Train Museum group could restore the east end of the depot to the way it was when passenger trains stopped here until 1961 and make a restaurant out of the west end of the depot that housed the Railway Express Agency and rename it the Choo Chew restaurant with a local restaurant operator.

Parking for patrons could be east of the depot if they buy space from the railroad there, also on North Grand Ave.

Also, an effort could be made to acquire at some point the old Star Clipper dinner train which is now in Paw Paw, Michigan, and bring it back to Charles City and run it on Canadian National railroad tracks from here to Osage and Cedar Falls on a trackage rights agreement with Canadian National Railroad.

This way the museum group would get the revenue needed to keep up maintenance on passenger rail cars it has and the tracks they sit on.

This would be really good for Charles City.