Annotations from the Archives: From a Trainman's Library
Red Cloud's historic Burlington Depot, in service for more than sixty years before it was decommissioned by the railroad, connected Red Cloud to the larger world. The technologies and processes that enabled such a connection were managed by dozens of men (and a handful of women) under the watchful eye of the station master. We hope the new interpretation at the Depot will give visitors a glimpse of daily life at the station.
Nelson Bush, who was first hired as a messenger boy for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Rail Road in 1896, finished his fifty-year railway career in Red Cloud, after thirty-three years as station master. The Karrer Collection, donated by Bush's granddaughter, contains many items from the railroad's heyday, such as maps charting the railroad's expansion across the state, as well as several items that Bush used in his work life.
A great many books—from several collections—speak to the technical knowledge required of the railroad men. Copies of Locomotive Firemen's Magazine and Railway and Locomotive Engineering Magazine were found in the Willa Cather Childhood Home attic and date to the Cather's occupancy of the home. Fireman's, which was edited by Eugene Debs, focused on labor and regulations related to safety and compensation, while Engineering featured straightforward information on new and improved rolling stock, technological advances in individual components, maintenance updates, and business expansions. The Standard Guide for Locomotive Engineers and Firemen Illustrated, however, was a more concise "how-to" type of manual, meant for daily carrying.
The WCPM Collection contains even more technical information. When the depot was acquired by the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial, many of the business materials remained in the building. Framed safety warnings lined the office, and the forms that literally kept local trains running on time filled the cabinets and desk drawers. Always the beating the heart of the railroad business, we plan to utilize these forms and historical office machines as part of our teaching collection, so that students and lifelong learners alike will help to recreate the sounds and sensations of a working station.
Technical bulletins and manuals are also represented in our collections. In addition to the important role these materials played in training railroad men during the railroad's golden age, the schematic drawings, timetables, and maps from these manuals will become important visual elements in our new interpretation. They provide critical context for modern visitors who are unfamiliar with railway lingo or mechanisms.
We are particularly looking forward to the chance to incorporate sound and other sensory activities to the depot. Cather consistently depicted the depot as a community hub, filled with a constant hum of human voice and motion, and during its time in use, the depot evolved to include other activities besides just railroad business. Nelson Bush and the Inavale station master L.N. Nash saw a need to establish a local telegraphy school, which they operated with the support of the Burlington Rail Road. The young men trained to become telegraph operators and substitute station agents, splitting their days between Red Cloud and Inavale.
We hope to continue this idea of the local depot as a place of learning and community gathering. One of Red Cloud's most iconic buildings, the depot was restored in 2020-2021 through the National Willa Cather Center's Campaign for the Future. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places both for its significance to Willa Cather's writing and its architectural uniqueness. If you would like to support the reinterpretation efforts at the Burlington Depot, please visit our project page. If you have collection items related to the Burlington railroad or the Red Cloud depot in particular, please reach out to Tracy Tucker, Director of Collections and Curation, for information about how to donate to our collections.