The End-O-Line Railroad Park and Museum started as a Community Pride Project in 1972 and was taken over by Murray County in 1975. It is dedicated to collecting, preserving, exhibiting and interpreting artifacts and stories of the Southwest Minnesota frontier experience.
The railroad that used to run to Currie was a branch line of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railway incorporated in 1880 as a consolidation of the Chicago, St. Paul & Minneapolis Railway and the North Wisconsin Railway. Most of its trackage was in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but there was additional trackage in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota, and total trackage eventually reached 1,616 miles. The Chicago & North Western
Railway gained control of the company in 1882, leased the road in 1957 and finally merged the two companies in
1972.
The line to Currie came off the main line at Bingham Lake, MN, and was originally planned to go through to South Dakota but, with lines going through Tracy on the north and Slayton on the south, there was never any incentive to build past Currie and, hence, the museum’s name: this truly was the “end of the line”.
At Currie, the tracks spurred to create four forks off the main line. One fork went to the water tower, sand tower, coal shed, engine house and turntable. The other three passed across the road to three former grain elevators, freight line and passenger line, which was where the original depot once stood. It has since been relocated across the road in the park next to the engine house and the turntable.
Below, a museum diorama of the original depot and yard at Currie.
The Pidcock family had founded a private logging railroad in the early 1890s that ran north from the settlement of Pidcock, six miles east of Boston. The Pidcocks combined their assets into the Georgia Northern Railway.
From 1905, they began purchasing other railroads, including the Flint River & Northeastern Railroad in 1910, the Georgia, Ashburn, Sylvester & Camilla Railway in 1922 and the Georgia Southwestern & Gulf Railroad in 1939. These roads were collectively known as the Pidcock Kingdom shortlines in Sowega.
#102 is a Ten Wheeler type (4-6-0) locomotive built for the Georgia Northern at Alco’s Richmond, VA, works in 1923.
The Georgia Northern began in the early 1890s as a logging railroad running north from Pidcock, a logging community east of Boston, GA, owned by the Pidcock family. In 1891, a group of businessmen organized the Boston & Albany Railroad to build a line along the route of logging tracks between the two townships. The company went into receivership and its assets were sold in 1894 to the Pidcock family.
Fortunately, #102 was spotted by an individual involved with the Illinois Railway Museum. Having located the owner, David Jensen’s daughter, the museum negotiated donation of the engine, where it remained until 1993 when it was sold to the End-O-Line.
The engine weighs 135,000 lbs, 102,000 lbs on its 56” drivers. A coal burner with 26” x 28” cylinders, it operated at a boiler pressure of 180 psi delivering 25,640 lbs tractive effort. It is on display with M&STL Caboose #1133, which was moved to the park from Sioux Falls in 2008.
The Southern Railway took over the Georgia Northern in 1966, fully merging it with the Albany & Northern Railway and the Georgia, Ashburn, Sylvester & Camilla in 1972 but maintaining the GN name for the subsidiary. It was eventually merged into the Georgia Southern & Florida Railway on 31st December 1993.
Some time in the 1950s, #102 was sold to the Norton Coal
Co., and worked at Ilsley, KY. It operated into the early 1960s, after which it was simply stored at the Ilsey property until bought by Richard Jensen in 1965. In 1984, the locomotive was sitting on a flatcar on the south side of Chicago, IL, waiting to be scrapped.
This locomotive was built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia, PA, in 1876 as #6 for the Ferrocarril de Salavery y Trujillo in Trujillo, Peru. It was later sold to the Cia. del Ferrocarril y Muelle de Pimental in Pimental, Peru, where it was renumbered #16.
In 1969 #16 was bought by John Pettingill in Ellenville, NY, and then by another owner before being acquired by the Marriot Corporation in Dayton, OH, in 1972. It was stored with several other engines at the Buckeye Boiler Company, part of a venture called the International Amusement Company, in Dayton until 1976 and was then relocated to Marriott's Great America Amusement Park in Gurnee, IL, some time before 1978.
#16 sat derelict until about 1983 when it was donated to the Illinois Railway Museum. It was sold in 1986 and restored in Ft. Wayne for display at an antique store in Frisco, CO.
For a short time the engine was on display at the Prairie Expo Museum in Worthington, MN. It
was then moved to the End-O-Line Railway Park in 2004 where it has been maintained in immaculate condition.
A narrow gauge (36") Mogul type (2-6-0) locomotive, #13 weighs 50,000 lbs, 43,000 lbs on its 38” drivers. An
oil burner with
16” x 16” cylinders it operated at a boiler pressure of 165 psi delivering 15,110 lbs tractive effort.
Left, the boiler backhead, Westinghouse air pump and cylinders.
This gas-mechanical switcher was built by the Brookville Locomotive Works in 1942.
Begun in 1918, Brookville was originally a Ford dealership and simply fixed railroad wheels to Ford trucks. However, this grew into a business fitting unfinished truck or tractor chasses with their own underframes, rail wheels and drives.
During the early 1930s, they started building locomotives, using outside suppliers for engines and transmissions and the company still produces diesel electric locomotives as the Brookville Equipment Corporation.
There is another Brookville switcher on the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum Yard page of this website.
