Railroad Car Houses

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Add pictures and histories of the car houses.

History of the 3 bay car house..
That building started life as a chicken coop on the Wayne Salmen farm three miles east of Wessington springs. At some point it was decided to raise chinchillas for their fur. This would have been the early 70s. Prices were high and nobody was doing it so good investment, right? Wrong! Suddenly everybody started raising chinchillas. So bad investment. In the early to mid 90s David got involved and offered the now empty building for use as a motorcar house.

On nice summer day, Joe and I went out with his roll-back tilt bed and brought it to the village. Wayne was so impressed he told the story for years; now only did we come on the day we arraigned, but arrived at 9 o’clock — right on the MINUTE we said.

The location was decided on (because Joe said so) because it would be out of the way. There was a lot of track materials and just plain junk that was too good to get rid of on the east side of the track. It sits crooked to the track because Joe didn’t want to waste time hand digging the holes so we used an 806 farmall with an auger on the back. The first hole went good but as we moved along the tractor kept slipping down the hill. As you might imagine the tractor sat at an extreme angle. We couldn’t put the tractor 90 degrees to the track because of the fence and they didn’t want to cut the fence and also the tractor brakes were very poor, as are most tractor brakes. I think we did as much hand digging to get the holes straight up as if we had just done it the hard way. Of course the holes were not in line so they were just left; “It won’t matter.” I didn’t, but I was never happy how it looked. (fussy old man syndrome)

The platform that is rotting and really should be replaced was part of a box car unloading ramp that was located between Washington ave and Lee ave in Madison. Closer to Lee. Its an empty lot now. I remember riding my bicycle up and down that ramp about 1963. Joe got it and somehow moved it to the village.

I think it is Ok where it is but the under support should be looked at; it seems that some of the timbers may be rotting. Another reason it was put there is so that there would be no problems with clear vision from the train going by; there is no place for people to stand out of sight of the engineer.