| | Volunteers in LaMoille are looking to save the village’s depot and caboose, including Charlie Strong of Elmhurst, who works on the caboose roof.
NewsTribune photos/Chris Yucus | <image005.png> | | Volunteers (from left) Bill Stouffer, Mayor Steve Stouffer and Ron Geuther work on re-roofing the LaMoille depot. |
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Craig Sterrett, EditorLAMOILLE — LaMoille’s mayor was helping with a roofing project on village property this week, but it wasn’t tax dollars at work.
Instead, volunteers came to the rescue of a nearly 140-year-old wooden caboose and 19th century railroad building in LaMoille. When it rains, it also rains inside the southern half of the oldChicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad depot/freight house that the village of LaMoille owns on the abandoned railroad right of way.
“They got a little money together so we’re going to try to save this depot,” said Clarion Township farmer Bill Stouffer, who was on the roof of the depot along with his brother, Mayor Steve Stouffer of LaMoille, Ken Geuther and other volunteers including Kris Ridge.
They brought scaffolding and tools from their shops and farms and lined up wood planks, to which a durable, green, metal roof will be attached.
In recent months, a local model-railroad club president, Carl Sennett, who lives in LaMoille, approached village officials about using the depot and caboose. Stouffer said members of the summer Buffalo Days celebration committee met earlier this fall, and decided to donate money to keep water out of the depot.
“I said, ‘We’ve got to get something done with that roof,’” Stouffer recalled saying to the Buffalo Days group.
He said the village will see no costs for the metal roof, which might cost $5,000 tops, thanks to donated labor and Buffalo Days money. He and his family may be back in the fields for the harvest today and tomorrow, but they plan to finish the roof soon. He said if area construction workers volunteer, they can get it done in just a morning.
ADM demolished large grain-elevator and warehouse buildings in a three-block-long, one-block-wide swath including the former rail yard west of U.S. 34 a couple of years ago, and then donated the property to the village after the company completed paying taxes on the land.
The Stouffers and volunteers had waited to start on the depot roof until a hoped-for grant from ADM came in, but they haven’t seen that yet. They went to work this week to get the building sealed up before winter.
Renter to take over
A local group of rail, history and model-railroading enthusiasts, North Central Illinois Model Railroad Club, will rent the depot and the all-wood, circa-1880 CB&Q caboose from the village.
Stouffer said he believes the village will be glad to let the club work on the caboose and depot. He said he hopes the village can create a park on the surrounding land. He said ADM has been helpful to the village, such as trucking in dirt and material for filling in low spots.
“We needed a place to set up our model railroad system and we’d like to build a new layout in the freight house. The city was real happy that we’d actually utilize it,” said Princeton resident and club member Steve T. Lewkowycz. He was working on shoring up and cleaning up the caboose with his son, Steve J. Lewkowycz, an Amtrak engineer and club member from LaGrange.
Preserving history
The Lewkowyczs have done volunteer work at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, and club members have a vision for the LaMoille site. The younger Lewkowycz said they’d like to restore the east room of the depot as it was as a passenger waiting room and freight customer area a century ago. He said he’d like to have old LaMoille photos and rail memorabilia and have the waiting room available to the public or a historical society.
They want to restore the rail agent office to how it was (minus “knob-and-tube wiring” of course), and they want to preserve the weather log/diary passages written on the office wall in pencil. There’s a lot of graffiti they want to get rid of, but not those dates and snowfall and temperature statistics. They also like the rail freight agents’ names and years. One of the legible years, marked on a bare wooden wall in the freight area, presumably with charcoal or ash, is 1909, but the building dates back farther than that. Lewkowycz motioned to a wide, open door in the middle of the depot and imagined its use in the early 1900s. “If you ordered something from the Sears catalog or Montgomery Ward catalog, it would be delivered here,” he said. Craig Sterrett can be reached at (815) 220-6935 or ntlocal@newstrib.com. Follow him on Twitter @NT_NewsEditor. - - - - |