Pioneer Village was founded in 1953 by Harold Warp, a Chicago manufacturer born in Minden, NE.
The complex comprises twenty-eight buildings on twenty acres and the collection includes over fifty thousand items from 1830 to the present, including frontier buildings, early cars and airplanes, tractors and other farm implements and an art collection, as well as two historic steam locomotives.
The entrance is at the intersection of US 6 & 34 and Nebr. Hwy 10.The collection is open all year round, including all major Holidays, except Christmas Day.
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy K-10 Class Ten Wheeler (4-6-0) type locomotive #967 started life
as Burlington & Missouri River Railroad #343, an H-4 Mogul type (2-6-0) built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1899. When the B&MR was consolidated into the CB&Q in 1902, it was renumbered #1229.
It was then one of nineteen of the class converted to Ten Wheeler types (#950-#968) by the Burlington between 1908 and 1914. #1229 was one of the last converted, outshopped from the Havelock, IA, works in 1914 as #967.
#967's engine wheelbase is 26’ 5” and the
driver wheelbase 15’ 2”. It weighs 161,000 lbs, 121,700 lbs on its 69” drivers and is equipped
with 19” x 26” cylinders and Stephenson valve gear. With a 30 sq ft grate, 162.4 sq ft firebox including 16.2 sq ft of arch tubes, the total heating surface is 2,531 sq ft. Operating at a boiler
pressure of 200 psi, it delivered 23,125 lbs tractive effort. The tender weighs 94,700 lbs light and has a capacity of 5,000 gallons of water and 9 tons of coal.
#967 was sold to Harold Warp in 1955.
Narrow gauge (42”) #2 was built as #1 in 1888,
one of two wood burning 0-4-0ST (Saddle Tank) locomotives outshopped for the Canadian Pulp and Paper Co., in Hull, PQ, by H. K. Porter in Pittsburgh, PA. It weighs 16,500 lbs and has 24” drivers and 7” x 12” cylinders. Operating at a boiler pressure of 140 psi, it delivered 2,915 lbs tractive effort.
At some point, #2 was converted to a coal
burner. Both locomotives were sold to the Huntsville & Lake of Bays Transportation Company in 1905.
The Huntsville & Lake of Bays was chartered in 1895 to operate steamboats on the Lake of Bays and a series of lakes connecting to Huntsville in the northern section of the Muskoka Lakes District of Ontario, Canada. A portage railway from North Portage on Peninsula Lake 1⅛ miles to South Portage on Lake of Bays was started in 1902. Trains started operating after the close of the navigation season in 1904.
#1 was sold to Cameron Peck in Chicago, IL, in 1948 and then to Harold Warp in 1949. It was moved to Pioneer Village in 1953.
