The following was send by a fried, but the article was undated.

FAIRBURY -- After a decade as a depot, 30 years as a Deshler coin laundry
and another decade as a Hebron storage shed, the 75-year-old "doodlebug"
rolled into town on Tuesday.
Rock Island Gas-Electric Motor Car No. 9047 was also known as a "puddle
jumper" among the engineers, conductors and brakemen who operated it on the
Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway.

Now the old branch line commuter car -- an engine, baggage carrier and
passenger car in one -- is a weathered addition to the recently completed
Rock Island Depot Railroad Museum on Second Street. The museum is
headquarters for the Jefferson County Historical Society.

"I don't know if I'm happy or not," said Don Mitchell, a retired railroader
and volunteer for the society. "The depot looked about that bad when we
started."

One of five gas-electric cars built in 1927 by the St. Louis Car Co., the
motor car traveled the branch lines in Missouri and Texas before it was
dismantled in 1951 to be used as a depot structure in Hebron. In 1960 it
became a coin laundry in Deshler. Hebron resident Pete Huffman turned it
into a storage shed in 1990. Mark and Deb Craig got the car when they
bought Huffman's place, and last year the Craigs donated the car to the
museum.

Ball and Son Movers of Belleville, Kan., placed the 75-foot motor car on
wheels and a section of track provided by the Union Pacific Railroad, which
has also offered to help with the estimated $7,000 restoration. Once
restored, it will carry the Rock Island's red and silver paint applied in a
1938 modernization, said museum curator Denise Andersen.

Andersen said she remembered sitting in the steel-sided car as a girl in
Deshler when her mother took her dad's work clothes in for washing.

"I used to hate going to that place," Andersen said. "I knew it was a
passenger car of some sort."

Now, however, the motor car is another link to the railroad past, which is
what the museum is all about.

"I only know of two others in the country," Andersen said.

Reach Larry Peirce at (402) 228-1245 or lpeirce@journalstar.com.



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