Web posted
Monday, April 21, 2008
First railroad festival gets out of the gate
By FOSS FARRAR
Traveler Staff Writer
reporter@arkcity.net
Ponca City resident Barbara Kent's two children love coming to Wilson Park in Arkansas City to play on the "pirate ship" slides, but they got an extra treat on Saturday.
Kent and her four-year-old son, Jacob, and five-year-old daughter Julia spotted a lot of activity in the park around the park's anchor, the old Santa Fe 2542 engine.
That day they saw puffs of white smoke coming from the engine stack and heard a train whistle. Nearby, the kids were able to sit in a smaller train engine and pose for a picture. Elsewhere in the park, model trains were running and food vendors offered sugar treats, Indian tacos and soda pop. Kids were bouncing up and down at the Thomas the Train Moonwalk.
It was all part of the first annual Cowley County Railroad Heritage Days. The event in Wilson park appropriately was called Family Fun Days.
"For a first-time event, I felt it was a success," said Connie Kimsey, director of the Arkansas City Convention and Visitors Bureau. "It was a great family event on Saturday."
Kimsey helped organize the overall event, which also included a reunion dinner Saturday night of former railroaders from throughout Oklahoma and Kansas. The Family Fun Days organizer was Heather Ferguson, director of the Cherokee Strip Land Rush Museum.
At a games booth run by Ferguson, six-year-old Adam Grose threw bean bags through openings in a dinosaur. Ferguson ducked when one bag whizzed by her.
"He loves trains," said Adam's mother, Lisa Groves, as Adam was picking out his prize -- he settled on a train hat over a stuffed dog.
Earlier that day, railroad buff Bob Frahm talked about the interurban railway that used to link Wichita with Newton and Hutchinson. Little remains today of the old Ark Valley Interurban, an electric train that branched off from the Wichita area to the Newton and Hutchinson destinations at Van Arsdale junction.
Frahm showed slides of remnants of the interurban that he had taken in the mid-1980s. The pictures traced the route of the rail line.
Several bridges remain, he said, along with some poles for overhead electric lines, some track marks, and a battered up rail car. At Hutchinson, the old AVI depot building still stands.
Emcee in the Wilson Park Rotunda was Nick Rogers, who wore a railroad hat. He said that like Frahm, he had traced the former interurban route that connected Arkansas City with Winfield.
"I traced the route within Ark City, not the entire line to Winfield," he said.
Rogers said that when his kids were younger he took them on bike rides down South Summit tracing the old interurban route as it turned east and went to the former C.T. Wells Produce plant.
As he was setting up for his band to provide music for the festival, Donnie Huffman said he also is a railroad buff.
"I used to work as a teletype operator for the Santa Fe when I was in college," Huffman said. "I'm excited about this festival and doubly excited that the old Texas Chief may be re-established."
Huffman referred to the proposed northern expansion of the Heartland Flyer Amtrak line that now links Fort Worth with Oklahoma City.
Passenger rail proponents Evan Stair and Autumn Heithaus had a booth in the park with literature promoting the Amtrak expansion from Oklahoma City to Arkansas City and on north to Wichita and Kansas City. They distributed postcards that people could send to the governors of Kansas and Oklahoma urging their backing of the proposed expansion.
Heithaus, executive director of the Northern Flyer Alliance, said rising gasoline prices and the relative efficiency of trains moving unimpeded through the country, make an attractive transportation option.
Railroad author Robert Collins addressed the reunion of over 50 railroaders and their families Saturday night.
He said that, overall, four trains came through Cowley County since 1879 including the Santa Fe, Frisco, Missouri Pacific and Midland Valley.
"A fifth rail line would be the Southwestern Interurban, the electric line that connected Ark City and Winfield," Collins said.
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