Ron,

To elaborate a bit more, I don't know which is the weaker link in the provenance... The estate of the man (apparently now deceased) who did the restoration / rebuilding / replication, or the people at IRM representing them in the sale.

In the first case, no one involved in the estate may have had any close involvement with the work, so they may not really know the source of the parts.

In the second case, I see Nick Kallas is named as the contact at IRM. I've known Nick for years... he is many things, but a historian of obscure narrow gauge lines would not place very high on my list. He most likely doesn't know any more than the estate has told him.

I think they are taking the position that the car 'is what it is', and I suppose rather than risk misrepresenting it, I have to agree with that approach. It might be interesting to track down the source of not only the parts but also the design, but I doubt it would add anything to the monetary value.

I was just trying to point out that there were similar coaches in service up there at one time, and there is no reason not to think that one or more became sheds.

Dennis and Ron,

It's a shame we don't know more. Absent that, anything else is just speculation. This guy seemed to operate largely under the radar of most people, which is a loss. Both cars show real craftsmanship and attention to detail. I would have loved to see this guy's research files and reference material. If it was a new build, he certainly did his homework. If it was rebuilt from a hulk, or a hulk served as a giant pattern, it still took quite the effort to make it look "right."

I believe IRM is selling the car to bankroll movement of the Lake City to Union, and to pay the requisite track space and indoor storage fees.

David

I believe the same man who rebuilt a narrow gage flatcar I used to own rebuilt this one. I used to own a 3' gage flatcar that came from Quincy and Torch lake RR. It was lettered Mineral Range. I had purchased the flatcar from the defunct Toby's Mill and Mission Creek RR in Hinckley, MN. I tracked down the man who had rebuilt the car. He was a signpainter and lived in Wisconsin. He was suprised it was still in Minnesota as he had thaught it went to Japan with the other equipment.(Locomotives and Rio Grande caboose) He told me the story about how he had purchased some cars from the Q&TL site in the 1970's. He also told me about a narrow gage DSS&A heritage coach he was rebuilding. He told me some parts were cast DSS&A. I was amazed and always wondered about the car. He sure did a wonderful job on the rebuild.
-Erik Thompson

Here is a photo of the Mineral Range flatcar.

Was that the guy with the almost full size UP Big Boy painted on the side of his barn? About twenty years ago some friends and I drove from Madison to the Twin Cities, starting out on Hwy 14 by way of Coon Valley and LaCrosse... Don't ask why. The Big Boy made quite a sight from the highway.

On that same trip we stopped somewhere in southwestern Wisconsin to inspect a heavyweight passenger car spotted in a field along the road... now I'm positive it was the LAKE CITY. At the time it was painted MOW red, and about all I can say is it was structurally complete. The work and expense that went into the restoration is truly amazing.

Erik,

Thanks for that information and for posting the photo of the Mineral Range flatcar. It surely adds another dimension to the mystery. That mystery is the question of why it is lettered for the Mineral Range. Q&TL did acquire some rolling stock from the Mineral Range, which was also 3-foot-gage in the early era. However, I would be surprised if the Q&TL retained the Mineral Range lettering on the car for any significant amount of time. By 1970, when he bought the flat car, most of the lettering on the Q&TL cars was nearly invisible from fading and weathering.

So, the buyer of that flat car either discerned that the car had originated as a Mineral Range car, and thus lettered it for the Mineral Range Railroad, or he simply made an arbitrary decision to letter it for the MR.

If the latter is the case, I wonder what the reason was. Why restore a historical car and letter it to represent a hypothetical example of a car owned by another railroad?

Your reference to the guy restoring a DSS&A coach is really intriguing. That seems like he must have been referring to the narrow gage coach for sale today. I would have to review the history, but, as I recall, the DSS&A acquired the Mineral Range RR. If this acquisition occurred during the narrow gage phase of the MR, then the DSS&A would have owned narrow gage equipment. So your information about him restoring a narrow gage DSS&A coach would plausibly explain the origin of the narrow gage coach for sale today.

If a close inspection of the coach revealed castings lettered DSS&A, as the guy mentioned in the information that he conveyed to you about the car he was working on, that would seem to confirm the Mineral Range RR origin of the car that is for sale today. Then the main question is how a narrow gage DSS&A coach survived into the mid 1900s.

To me, the most significant possibility is that the car for sale today is a completely intact coach originally owned by the Mineral Range RR or DSS&A in the pre-1900 period.

That's the same question as why, with hundreds of actual railroads to choose from, do model railroaders adopt "freelance" names to put on their models?

That's one of the reasons I tend to dislike tourist railroads. Without a strong mission statement aimed at historical accuracy, and a decent amount of peer review, they can just become large model railroads. Someone says the coaches would look neat in purple with silver roofs, and the train becomes purple with a silver roof. But I digress.

I was surprised that Google Books has scanned Hilton's American Narrow Gauge Railroads. Here's a link (we'll see if this works) to a page with a pocket history of the Mineral Range Railroad:

http://books.google.com/books?id=7POj8G ... AD&f=false

It states that the DSS&A gained control of 53% of the narrow gauge Mineral Range in 1893, and the line was standard gauged between 1897 and 1902. So, the line was operated as a three foot gauge line while under DSS&A ownership, and it could be possible for hardware on the NG cars (most likely wheels) to be marked DSS&A.

I note the close-up photo of the coach truck show Ohio Falls Car Co. lettering cast into the pedestals; this is the builder that later became the Jefferson City plant of AC&F, IIRC. I wish I could find a roster of the Mineral Range and Hancock & Calumet passenger cars; it would be interesting to see if any were built by Ohio Falls Car Co.

I had thought that the window with the slightly raised sill at the end of the car side would be an easy spotting feature, IF it was faithfully copied from the original, but alas, no luck. In Campbell's article in The SOO he mentions that the coaches had 1-2 seating, and were arranged like Jim Crow cars (a misuse of the term, for sure) with the stove in the center of the car, and the seating arrangement reversed on each side of the stove. However, from the few photos in the article, only one shows the smoke jack in the center of the car, several others show it at one end, which is more normal, and the same as the car in question. It certainly would be nice if there was some research data that could accompany the car, and be made available to the public.

One thing that bothers me about this car is that the clerestory windows appear to have a completely different spacing from the main windows in the body. That's very unusual. All normal wooden cars have the same pattern of windows, so the carlines line up across the roof structure, and with the body posts. That would indicate to me that the car was heavily rebuilt, at a minimum. This is really an interesting mystery. I wish I had some free time to drive up and inspect it myself.

But it is a beautiful car nonetheless, and you should all dig deep into your wallets to bid on it. Remember, you can buy with confidence from Honest Nick!

The man who rebuilt the car was named William and this was a former car from the Quincy. He had rebuilt the coach that had the added cupola that was famous in some pictures. I checked with a friend in the UP. It was like the previous poster had said, it had survived as a chicken coop into the 1970's. Many of the parts were recast. On my former Mineral Range flatcar he had rebuilt, there were some recast aluminum parts and it had been a complete rebuild. This coach probably came from the Mineral Range when it sold the narrow gage equipment to the Quincy in the early 1900's (1904?). Here is a photo for reference only this is a standard gage Minerel Range flat at Quincy. Narrow gage numbers were even, standard were odd. The Mineral Range Purchased the narrow flats from Wells and French in 1889. This photo was the inspiration for William to paint the Quincy flat Mineral Range. William told me he never had the original number, he just went one off from the standard gage car. The rebuild of the chicken coop car was a talented mans lifetime work masterpiece. It has its history the same as any other rebuilt car. Most cars were rebuilt every 20 years or so the chances of being original from day one are not very likely. But, I guess this is one persons opinion.

Thanks for doing a little leg work. Interesting, and it certainly makes sense.

By the way, what did you end up doing with the flat car?

I sold it to the owner of the former Kettle Moraine Railroad to go with his 3' gage collection.

I am puzzled. Here is a link that shows Q&TL coach/caboose #4 if you scroll down a little ways. I don't know the date of this picture, but it had to be pre-1963.

http://www.copperrange.org/qtl.htm

I think I learned of this caboose being on a farm near the Q&TL right of way in 1975 when they were pulling the four locomotives out of the engine house. I could recognize caboose #4 from the road when driving by, but it was in extremely poor condition. It was in much worse condition than shown in the photo in the above link.

I know someone who did measuring of the ruins to produce a drawing of caboose #4. He told me that the car was literally a pile of disintegrating lumber and his measuring and documentation was almost like archeology. It was a major challenge to collect enough dimensions to make a drawing. I am not sure when he did this work, but I would guess it was in the 1980s to possibly early 1990s. I know that I last saw caboose #4 while driving by sometime at least as recently as the early 1990s, and it was all but unrecognizable.

So when did William acquire the remains of this caboose #4 and turn it into the narrow gage passenger car we see today?

When I talked to him about the flatcar in the early 2000's he told me about the coach project. He must have started after those measurements were taken. The coach was originally longer before it was a coach/caboose. It was cut down by the Quincy. Seeing his work on the flat, where he rebuilt it from a rotting pile makes me feel the coach project is not out of the relm. I feel he reconstructed the original dimention car with the hardware and whatever else remained from the chicken coop pile. Like I stated in my previous post many cars were rebuilt in their lifetime leaving not much left from their original construction. My railroad is standard gage so I will have to pass on it for now. 3rd rail???

Erik,

I believe your explanation of the origin of this coach is accurate. At first, I could not reconcile the use of the remains of Q&TL caboose #4, but the iron parts were probably intact when the car was placed in the farmyard. And as others have mentioned, the builder of the coach (William Von Feht) may have only used the metal parts.

This has been confirmed by others I have spoken to, and generally, I conclude that the coach is completely freelance design and new construction except for some iron parts from Q&TL caboose #4.

In looking at the photos of Q&TL caboose #4, and a drawing of it, I see nothing in the design of #4 that matches this coach. The roof design, clearstory windows, side windows, all window trim and framing, outside wood paneling on sides and ends, door panel detail, trucks, end platforms—all of these details are different from caboose #4.

This has been a really enjoyable thread. Thank you all for contributing.