New exhibit panels installed in Train Shed

Sign on the Northern Pacific bunk car.

New exhibit panels have been installed on or near eight objects in the Train Shed Exhibit Building. The panels were developed and purchased with a 2017 4Culture Heritage Special Projects grant and are now on display for the visiting public. Fossil Industries fabricated the panels. The Museum has used Fossil, based in New England, for several projects – the company is a leader in High Pressure Laminate (HPL) signage. HPL is a popular exhibit material because it is fade resistant and anti-graffiti.

Eight artifacts now sport a new panel that will help interpret the type of railroad car (general history) as well as the individual history of the car. The panels also include information on northern transcontinental lines including the Northern Pacific (NP), the Great Northern (GN), and Canadian Pacific (CP). Included are the GN X-101 and NP 1203 cabooses, the chapel car Messenger of Peace, the NP bunk car, the NP refrigerator car, a NP box car, a Polson Logging side dump car, and the CP 25 (formerly known as "Earnscliffe"). Four signs are 32” x 32” and are displayed on a sign stand next to their object. The other four panels are 24” x 24” and are affixed directly to the object in some way.

With these eight new signs added to the four signs already in the building, it means most of the large objects on display have their own interpretive sign. This is a major milestone for the education/exhibit department!

A 4Culture Heritage Special Projects Grant funded this exhibit. 4Culture is the cultural funding agency for King County, Washington. Using Lodging Tax and 1% for Art funds, 4Culture has four program areas to serve the county: arts, heritage, historic preservation, and public art. For more info on 4Culture, visit their website at www.4Culture.org. 

A big thank you to 4Culture for continuing to support exhibits at the Northwest Railway Museum.

Sign on one of the NP box cars in the Train Shed.

Large sign for the dump car - sign is affixed to
sign stands donated by Washington
State Historical Society.

Oh Canada!

In honor of Washington State's neighbor nation's 150th Anniversary of Confederation, Spike is pleased to highlight a little-known object in the Northwest Railway Museum's large object collection: former Canadian Pacific Railway officials car 25 (1918 - 1964), nee "Saskatchewan" (1918 - 1928), nee "Earnscliffe" (1881 - 1890), nee "Chapleau" (1881 - 1890).

The 25 was purportedly built as a coach in 1879 by the Gilbert, Bush and Company of Troy, New York for the Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa and Occidental Railway ("QMO&O").  It had an eventful history in the fast-expanding railway empires of the new Canadian Nation, and is an excellent example of late 19th Century wooden car construction. It experienced several ownership changes, and at least two reconstructions before May 1890 when it entered service as private car Earnscliffe.  

Earnscliffe was assigned for the use of dignitaries including Canada's first Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, who would have used this car whenever traveling by rail, up until his death in June 1891. Macdonald would almost certainly have traveled in this car during the spirited election of 1891 when the wedge issue was reciprocity (free trade) with the United States. By the way, he handily won using a rather remarkable slogan: "The Old Flag, The Old Policy, The Old Leader."  So free trade would have to wait for another 100 years.

Railroad cars usually have a much longer shelf life than elected officials, so Earnscliffe continued as a private car.  Which brings us to the famous photo accompanying today's post: On May 17, 1894 dignitaries including Canadian Pacific Railway President William Cornelius Van Horne (in the center gazing to his left) posed with private car Earnscliffe on the occasion of the dedication of Stoney Creek Bridge in Rogers Pass, British Columbia. 

Mr. Van Horne was an American railroad man from Illinois who on the recommendation of James Jerome Hill (himself a successful railway man born near Toronto) was hired to complete the Canadian Pacific Railway, and he succeeded beyond nearly all expectations. Meanwhile, James J. Hill went on to complete construction of the Great Northern Railway with its terminus at Puget Sound here in Washington State, and a less than cordial relationship developed between the two men. And the resulting legacy of economic aggression unleashed along the Washington - British Columbia border is an important interpretive theme the Northwest Railway Museum looks forward to sharing with future visitors.

Happy 150th Birthday, Canada!

Happy Birthday, Washington State

Why be modest? We’ll take credit for Washington State’s 120th birthday.

Washington became the 42nd state when President Benjamin Harrison signed a proclamation on November 11, 1889. It’s not coincidental that D. H. Gilman was signing Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway Company stock certificates (shown here) in 1888, or that investors were planning the town of Snoqualmie in 1889, or that the Snoqualmie Depot was built in 1890. Railroads were crucial to Washington Territory’s development and statehood.

Before railroads, you got here by wagon or ship. The first trains began operating in Washington Territory in the 1870s. In 1883, a spike driven in Montana completed the second transcontinental railroad, this one reaching the Pacific Northwest. (The first connected the East Coast to California.) Washington State’s population surged to 357,232 by 1890, a five-fold increase in 10 years. (In case you’re wondering, we’re past 6 1/2 million now.) Seattle's population grew from 1,107 residents in 1870 to 3,533 in 1880 . . . to 42,837 in 1890. Trains, of course, didn’t only bring an influx of people. Trains carried goods and materials essential to the region’s growth and development.

The Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern connected Snoqualmie to Seattle in 1889, the year Washington became a state. Does the Northwest Railway Museum have any artifacts from that era?

The Snoqualmie Depot, shown here around 1896, was built in 1890. About 150 feet of original track remain in front of the depot today. The final image shows original SLSE rail laid in 1889. This was the main track until about 1963. Rail behind the depot is also from the period. However it wasn’t laid here until 1999. It came from local logging lines.

Bridge 35 over Snoqualmie River’s South Fork provides a view of the most common bridge design of that period. The through-pin-connected Pratt truss bridge was built in 1891, although it spanned a river in Montana before being relocated to North Bend in 1923.

The Northern Pacific day coach 889 is considered the oldest railway car/large object in the Museum’s collection. It was purportedly built in 1881, though it could have been built a few years later. (We have no definitive research yet.) The Canadian Pacific 25 was built in 1881 but didn’t find its way west until the 1890s.

You can see a picture of a steam locomotive built in 1885 (not in our collection) on the Washington State Steam Railroads and Locomotives website.


Sources:
Secretary of State blog
Seattle History Examiner
History Link
Seattle Times
Encyclopedia of Western Railroad History: Oregon, Washington, by Donald B. Robertson