Mid-Continent opens exhibit hall funded by Hill descendant NEWSWIRE

NORTH FREEDOM, Wis. – For the first time in 43 years, Mid-Continent Railway Museum has added significant indoor exhibit space funded and that hall is funded largely by a bequest from the great-grandson of the famous Empire Builder James J. Hill, founder of the Great Northern Railway.

The Laurence Dorcy Coach Shed No. 2 opened Saturday in a brief ribbon cutting ceremony. The $970,000 building adds more than 10,500 square feet of covered display space and 600 feet of indoor track. Among the gems packed inside on opening day were the museum’s famous Wisconsin fish hatchery car, Lake Superior & Ishpeming 2-8-0 No. 22, a Chicago & North Western drovers caboose, and Montana Western Electro-Motive Corp. doodlebug No. 31. Near the entrance is the unrestored office car A-22 of Louis Hill, the private car of benefactor Dorcy’s grandfather, Louis Hill. The unique 1905 office car, which features a pocket for carrying an automobile, will be restored as part of a 2011 bequest.

The addition of the building follows Coach Shed No. 1, which was built 43 years ago, but the road to the new building was not an easy one. Mid-Continent board member Jeff Huttenburg told supporters the first meeting to launch the project took place in April 2014. Complicating the efforts were the need to site the Coach Shed No. 2 and 2-½ feet above the flood plain where the majority of the museum is located but to carefully situate it so that it avoided natural springs and did not result in a steep grade for tracks to reach the building.

Excavation began in 2016 and continued into 2017. Building work did not begin until 2018 but was beset by historic floods. Huttenburg broke down the funding into one third shares each for the excavation, the structure, and the tracks.

The addition means 85 percent of the museum’s wood car collection – a greatest hits assemblage of famous American wood car manufacturers – is under a roof. Museum officials say theirs is the largest collection of wood railroad cars solely for display with an average age of 111 years. The building is not a display shed, Huttenburg said, but “a senior center for railroad cars.”

A handful of museums and tourist railroads are working to put more of their collections under roofs to slow deteriorization of prized pieces as the years take their toll. Another recent example is Utah’s Heber Valley Railroad, which recently opened a covered building for its operating passenger equipment.

Ahead for the Mid-Continent Railway Museum is the restoration of its iconic steam locomotive Chicago & North Western R-1 4-6-0 No. 1385. The locomotive’s new boiler is nearing completion at a contract shop in St. Louis. Once it is returned, the museum will have once again its figurehead restored.