For more information about the Gopher State group, go to http://www.gsrm.org.
Article #5 From the: Minneapolis Star & Tribune
Working on the railroad (museum)
Metscape: They've been working on the railroad (museum)
Bill McAuliffe
Published February 16, 2003
SCAP16
For Orville Richter and other railroad lovers, the urgency
is this:
so few relics, so little money, so little time.
"If somebody doesn't work to save this history, it's going
to disappear,"
said Richter, vice president of the Gopher State Railway Museum.
Right now the museum is more an idea than a destination. It's
mostly a far-flung
collection of broken-down rail cars and fundraising efforts. But
with the Scott
County Board's approval Tuesday, it's a step closer to becoming
a museum-park
on about 20 acres between New Prague and Jordan. Museum President
Mike Lehne
said that if his group can find about a half-million dollars,
they could have an actual
attraction by 2005.
But one glance suggests what needs to be done: amid open fields
of wind-packed
snow along Hwy. 21, the hollowed hulks of two old Soo Line passenger
cars and
a caboose rest behind a wire fence, along with a decrepit Great
Northern baggage car.
A half-mile up the track, another passenger car, still outfitted
as the home addition it
became in the 1950s, also awaits restoration.
The museum-to-be has additional prized possessions, including
an 1871 caboose,
but they're in Chaska.
"This is really for kids," said Richter, who traces
his love for trains to an old Lionel
set and the steam engines that used to blow by his family farm
in southwestern
Minnesota. "It's getting so they don't know anything about
trains anymore."
For more information about the Gopher State group, go to http://www.gsrm.org.
