The Montevideo Arts Project is responsible for the grant-funded effort to move, clean up and paint the tender that last operated on the Twin Cities & Western Railroad. After a grade-crossing accident in the 1990s, the railroad donated the tender sans plow to the Milwaukee Road Heritage Center.
Artist Lili Payne, with volunteer assistance, produced the artwork depicting a steam-powered passenger train at the Montevideo station, according to the MAP Facebook page. A Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific herald is included.
“It ties two things together: our rail heritage as well as our desire to have artwork in Montevideo that is significant,” MAP volunteer Donna Krueger tells Trains News Wire.
Montevideo sits on the Milwaukee Road’s Pacific Extension and was a daily stop on the Chicago-Tacoma, Wash., Olympian Hiawatha until its discontinuance in 1964. Shortened successor trains called at Montevideo until 1969.
Before the project began, volunteers first had to remove tons of rock ballast left in the tender from its snowplow days. The car and trucks were then moved to a section of track installed outside the station, home of the heritage center.
The heritage center also owns the Milwaukee Road roundhouse site in Montevideo with its still-extant turntable and collection of rolling stock including passenger cars, cabooses, a 1939 EMD SW1 switch engine and a 200-ton derrick.
The Olympian Hiawatha was discontinued in May of 1961, not 1964. It was cut back to Deer Lodge, Montana and eventually to Aberdeen, South Dakota.
Actually, Montevideo was a division stop, with roundhouse and shops, long before the Lines West extension of the early 20th century was considered.