ST. PAUL, MINN. — A Hiawatha “Running Indian” logo from famed Milwaukee Road Skytop lounge observation car Cedar Rapids has been stolen, car owner Friends of the 261 reported. The car was recently used on the Autumn Colors Express excursion trains in West Virginia and had been returned to its home base in St. Paul when the logo was stolen. While the group cannot determine any specific time the theft took place, it believes it was the night of Oct. 25 in the Minnesota Commercial Railway yard in St. Paul.
The theft had to be pre-planned, Friends of the 261 President and Chief Operating Officer Steve Sandberg said. “To remove the logo, you had to use a special type of wrench,” Sandberg said. “It’s not like they could walk up and use a screwdriver, you actually had to order this special wrench. So whoever committed the theft had to have planned it,” he added.
The logo was original to the car, one of two the Skytops wore, one on each side. Several years ago the Friends had the two logos chrome-plated, covering the original cast aluminum. This should be easier to identify the stolen logo. “If anyone come across a chrome-plated Hiawatha logo, that was the one that was stolen,” said Sandberg.
The group has had cast aluminum replicas made over the years. Now one will have to be sent out and chrome-plated. “We will end up putting it on so now even if you had the specialty wrench you could not get if off,” Sandberg said.
“It’s disappointing that in this era that somebody would steal something like this. It’s not like stealing something off a piece of equipment going to the scrapyard. This is a historic car that’s in operation, and the thought that someone would steal something off this artifact is a little bit mind-boggling. It’s a little bit like going to an art museum and stealing art off the wall,” Sandberg says.
The Friends of the 261 is asking that anyone with information pertaining to the theft contact them at www.261.com.
This is just horrible…if they are a rail “fan” as you point out they would never do such a thing.
Well the person that stole it is obviously a railfan or they would not know about the special wrench business and I am going to venture a guess that it was actually someone that worked on the car or a sister car with same logo attached because most thefts are done by someone that is familar to the item being stolen as well as the owner in some respect. Possibly a former employee or former employee of a rail museum with other similar cars. Also, my guess is they did not steal it to sell it but to also use it to create a mold to sell replicas. Just guessing though.
What good was stealing it going to do for the person who stole it. It is so unique and easily identified as belonging to a Milwaukee Road car it would be hard to sell to a dealer or train artifact collector. However this just points out how important security is needed to protect historic railroad items.
These days on-site guards, surveillance cameras, alarms and motion-activated lighting are necessary to guard valuable properties.