The attached grainy old slide, probably dating to the early 1960s, recently was offered for sale on eBay and shows what has long gone unrecognized by Q fans: a surviving four-wheel waycar -- or at least its body. And it has long been on public display, even lettered CB&Q. It resides at Pioneer Village in Minden, Neb., but despite numerous attempts to get the people there to research just where museum founder Harold Warp found the body -- undoubtedly somewhere in Nebraska -- they have turned a deaf ear on my requests.
Not only is it a four-wheel bobber body (now resting on a single-truck streetcar truck), it's from the less numerous of the two classes on the Q roster: the 11 cars of class NM-1, numbered 14900-14910, the first four built at Aurora in 1898-99 and the other seven at Plattsmouth about the same time. This is most likely one of the cars built at Plattsmouth for the B&MR. But company records tell next to nothing of the disposition of these 11 cars, most of which were retired in the 1910s, though one (14903) lasted until December 1931 and was scrapped at Omaha -- meaning this could well be the body of that car, which is the last of the four built by Aurora.
I'm also attaching a view of the first car of the group, built as CB&Q 300 and renumbered 14900 in 1904, to show how they looked when new, plus a view of Q 303 at Princeton, Ill., in 1900, leaving no doubt that the car at Minden is indeed one of the NM-1s, which measured a scant 15'4" over the body end sills. If it is in fact the 14903, then it's the same car shown in the Princeton photo. (I'll send the Princeton photo separately, as it's too large a file to send with the other two.)
Interestingly, in the view at Minden, where the bobber is coupled to an ancient Porter 0-4-0T, all four items of CB&Q ancestry owned and displayed by the museum are visible. In addition to the waycar, the single-story depot from Lowell, Neb., can be seen at left, while the big 16x24-foot wooden water tank -- then undergoing repairs -- is behind the waycar. And finally, the end of the wooden pilot beam of K-10 4-6-0 No. 967, with flag stanchion attached, is just visible at lower right. The Ten-Wheeler is painted in a god-awful scheme of red, black and silver and lettered B&MR, but it is the only surviving K-10. While preaching authenticity, Pioneer Village has little interest in accuracy when it comes to its railroad equipment.
Hol
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Posted by: Hol Wagner <holpennywagner@msn.com>
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