J. Harvey Koehn and the Wellington, Kansas Depot.
[Wellington, Kansas] – Sumner County Historical & Genealogical Society in Wellington, Kansas will host “Kansas Railroad Depots: Taking a Look Back at Stops Along the Railroad Track” a presentation by J. Harvey Koehn on Monday, October 21st at 6:30 p.m. at Cowley College, Short General Education Center, Room 113, 2208 Davis-White Loop, Wellington.
This free program is open to the public.
For more information, visit www.ksschgs.com or contact the SCHGS at 620-440-4245 on Tuesdays from 10 – 4. After hours: Jane at 620-447-3266; Sherry at 316-833-6161.
J. Harvey Koehn said he grew up in rural McPherson, just a quarter of a mile from a Rock Island main line, and a Santa Fe branch.
“My interest in railroads and trains started back when I was a kid on the farm,” Koehn said, “I can just barely remember the era of steam engines.”
According to Koehn, people that are fascinated with railroads often are interested in specific areas, such as passenger trains, steam engines, or locomotives.
“My area of interest is the depots,” Koehn said.
“All depots are stations, but not all stations are depots,” Koehn said, promising to explain the difference in his presentation.
Koehn said he collects rule books, public and employee timetables, and has a small collection of the specialized padlocks known as switch locks.
He also collects images of depots for the Santa Fe, Rock Island, Union Pacific, Frisco, and the Katy railroads from around the state, including several depots located in Sumner County, and will share many of these in his presentation.
When depots were in active use, Koehn said, the stations had agents and operators. Before the telephone, the agents received information for the train engineers via the telegraph and handed it up to the engineer “on the fly.” An identical copy would be handed up to the conductor as the train sped by the station.
A telegram was also the fastest way to get good or bad news to families, and so the depot agent was often the first to know the news.
The local mail for many small towns also arrived and left on the train.
The outgoing mail was enclosed in a heavy canvas bag, hung on a hook by the tracks and was snagged with a hook as the train raced by. The incoming mail was dropped out of (thrown off) the train in another heavy mail sack, often skidding across the ground and landing at the feet of the pick-up person.
When asked, Koehn said that one of the most unusual depots he has seen was the Union Pacific depot at Wilson, Kansas that was made of reddish native sandstone.
“It was built in 1867, and I saw it still standing over a hundred years later,” Koehn said.
