T & N Railroad, an important part of Tabor and southwest Iowa history. The railroad was described as homemade because the people of Tabor undertook its construction when major railroad companies decided it wouldn’t be a profitable enterprise. They were wrong. During its 43 years of operation the small railroad moved thousands of passengers and tons of freight and livestock. Sadly, there’s no trace today of the almost nine miles of track, depot, sidings, or roundhouse. The few artifacts that remain include a locomotive bell, a lamp, and a few tools which are on display in the Tabor Museum. These items are precious reminders of an enterprise that defined Tabor’s ability to overcome what many believed to be insurmountable challenges in building and operating a railroad. Unfortunately, there are no official company records to study but it has been possible to piece the broad outline of the story together using letters, photographs, newspaper articles and personal recollections. When the Tabor & Northern (T&N) Railroad officially ended operations on March 1, 1933, Joe Lybarger may very well have reflected on his hard work and ingenuity in keeping the old Consolidation Class locomotive engine going for as long as it did. Joe was the last engineer employed by the small line and had brought the rebuilt locomotive back from Atlanta, where it had been purchased in 1924. The crewmen who worked with Joe held him in high regard for his skill in running and repairing the steam boiler. He was also known as the only man who could leverage a flanged locomotive wheel back on the track with a tree limb. Joe’s railroad had never been the shortest railroad in the country, as many believed, and it certainly wasn’t the fastest, but the little train was beloved by the town that built it and the men who kept it going against the odds. It would be missed.

Several decades earlier, during the heyday of railroad construction following the Civil War, the people of Tabor anxiously awaited the arrival of a spur running south from the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, which maintained an east-west line serving Malvern and Hillsdale, both less than ten miles away. Tabor was a prosperous and growing town that not only supported a robust agricultural economy but was home to Tabor College, the only four-year educational institution of its kind in southwest Iowa. Tabor residents were certain a rail connection would open up new markets to farmers and generate business for the merchants who supported them, as well as making the college far more accessible to prospective students living at a distance. However, the major lines decided that a connection would be unprofitable due to a geography dominated by rolling hills, which would require significant grading to keep the track as level as possible over the length of the route.

Thomas McClelland, an Irish immigrant who began teaching philosophy at Tabor College in 1880, firmly believed the pioneering spirit of the town could be harnessed to construct a railroad in the same way the founders had carved out a town and built a college. The young teacher teamed up with Prentiss Clark, the co-publisher of the local broadsheet, the Tabor Beacon, to drum up popular support. The idea was met with an enthusiastic response and there was general agreement that if the residents of Tabor wanted a railroad, they would have to build it themselves.

Malvern was chosen as the northern terminus because it was a stop for both the Burlington and Wabash lines; it was also home to sizeable grain storage facilities, a stockyard, and a meatpacking facility. Special elections were held in both towns in the summer of 1887 where voters overwhelmingly approved a property tax levy to begin construction of the railroad, a project estimated to cost $45,000. Fundraising began in earnest after articles of incorporation were filed in Fremont County, on November 18, 1887, for the T&N Railroad Company.

Tabor College was involved in the project from the beginning, seeing the line as not only beneficial to increasing enrollment but as a financially sound investment. The college trustees received regular updates on plans and cost estimates from McClelland and decided shortly after the railroad’s incorporation that the school would provide critical financial support to the project. After a series of special meetings in 1889, the school’s trustees committed the school to purchasing up to $30,000 in bonds and sufficient shares of stock to ensure controlling interest. Likewise, the town of Tabor rolled up its sleeves and solicited stock purchases and donations from its residents. Those who had no money offered their labor; one woman, unable to give either, donated eggs from her laying hens which were sold at auction with proceeds going to the railroad fund.

After securing the right-of-way from local farmers, construction of the nearly nine-mile track began in the fall of 1889. Firms in Malvern and Omaha were contracted for bridging and heavy grading (50,000 cubic yards of dirt were eventually moved) but local labor and material were also employed. Tabor residents and college students volunteered to build embankments and railroad ties were cut from trees near the town. Critical logistical support was also provided by the Burlington line, which leased specialized equipment, rolling stock, and, when needed, advice. The first locomotive employed by the T&N was in fact supplied by Burlington.
In addition to the locomotive, Tabor’s railway began business with two passenger cars and another for baggage and freight. The Reverend John Todd, Tabor’s spiritual leader, was one of the line’s first customers. He and his daughter, Minnie, rode the train from Malvern on December 20, 1889. In a letter to his son Curtis, Todd described Tabor’s festive mood and being met by a crowd of people, amid shouts and loud huzzas and soul stirring music from the Mikado [town] band. He added that the celebratory air included hand-shaking and hearty greetings! The small line was an immediate success and a source of immense pride for the community. The Tabor Beacon extolled that “the enterprise was pushed with unanimity of effort, pluck and liberality rarely equaled.” And townsfolk were not hesitant to pitch in when extra hands were needed. In the early years, short blasts on the engine’s whistle after a snowstorm would bring volunteers running to the station to help clear the tracks. The T&N initially scheduled three daily roundtrips to Malvern, to coincide with the Burlington and Wabash schedules, but it soon became evident that two runs would be sufficient, and in the era of strictly enforced blue laws, no trains ran on Sunday. Additional runs supporting sports or other special events were not uncommon. Typical was a train that took Tabor skaters to Malvern for a day at the cold storage plant on January 12, 1899. The fare was 35 cents. Another noteworthy surge occurred in 1904 when 400 customers bought tickets to attend Independence Day celebrations in Malvern. The business outlook was good in the early years and profits rose steadily from carrying passengers, freight, livestock, express packages and the U.S. Mail. During times of peak demand the T&N leased additional freight cars and locomotives from the Burlington line to move as many as twenty carloads a day of livestock, most destined for the Omaha and Chicago markets. There were also two sidings between Malvern and Tabor, permitting the farmers easy access to the train for loading produce and stock. The line transported just about anything that could be put on a flatcar, including bricks, ice and over one week in March, 1894, 2,190 dozen eggs. In the following year the T&N moved 452 carloads of freight--topping the list were hogs and cattle, followed by apples, wheat, oats, baled hay, and potatoes, among other things. The line earned a small but respectable profit of $3,308 when 1895’s income and expenses were tallied.

After eight years of managing the T&N, Tabor College officials decided that they could either run a college or a railroad, but not both. Therefore, in January, 1899, the trustees accepted a bid to purchase the line for $23,000 from Robert McClelland, an Omaha coal merchant and brother of the first president. The new owner acquired a profitable company, but one which faced challenges not easily overcome. First among them was the state of the railbed supporting small three-inch rails, chosen originally to save money, but soon seen as woefully inadequate for even a short-line operation. Derailments became so common that the train was forced to make its transit to Malvern at a snail’s pace of one hour or more, depending on weather or other unexpected factors. One frequent rider remembered children jumping off the moving train and running alongside for short distances, and it was not uncommon for the conductor to walk ahead of the train to shoo wandering livestock away from the track. Rumors that the train was unsafe began circulating around the town and college, prompting a survey in 1908 by company officials designed to still the terror of certain students who were afraid to ride. The inspectors, not surprisingly, gave the tracks a clean bill of health in spite of walking the line by moonlight. Collegian unease notwithstanding, the T&N account remained in the black, showing a profit of $4,139 at the time of its sale to McClelland, and continued chugging through the hills of southwest Iowa. Called by locals affectionately as the Toonerville Trolley, Tom & Nellie, and the Tabor & Nowhere, the people of Tabor stood solidly behind their enterprise and wouldn’t tolerate serious criticism. But storm clouds were on the horizon. With the beginning of highway construction after World War I, the line began experiencing ever-increasing financial pressure from a loss of passenger traffic, dropping from a high of around 15,000 a year in the late 1890s to only 4,662 in 1921.

The T&N changed hands one more time, purchased by a consortium of Tabor businessmen in 1920, with local residents holding most of the stock. The town’s optimism notwithstanding, the line’s future looked uncertain with plummeting numbers of passengers and increasing maintenance costs which were eating into potential revenue. In 1921 alone, the T&N spent $3,600 on repairs to its aging Mogul locomotive. Rolling stock was in need of replacement as well; after the old passenger coach was scrapped the line was forced to offer boxes as seating in the freight car, with a pot-bellied coal stove providing heat during the winter. Aside from the truly adventurous (or desperate), there were few takers. As a last-ditch effort to revive passenger service, the company built a “motor bus” railcar powered by a Model T engine, which would more economically move patrons along the line. Three of the contraptions, complete with cow catchers, were hobbled together at a cost of $2,300.

By the mid-1920s the line had only four full-time employees, including engineer Lybarger, and four part- time section hands, each earning 40 cents an hour. Passenger traffic had dwindled to only a few hundred customers a year but freight and agricultural shipments continued to keep the line afloat. In an ironic twist, the T&N hauled sand and gravel from Malvern destined for the construction of Primary Road Number 4 (Highway 275) in the spring of 1929. During its last three years of operation the train was running only once a day, dropping to twice a week. At their annual meeting in 1931, stockholders were told that the line had turned a small profit of $786.62 the previous year, which included only $1.50 from three passengers, but the meager income couldn’t begin to address the company’s large debt load, which included paying interest on $34,000 in bonds held by the Burlington line. By 1932 the T&N was losing money and was unable to meet even its tax obligations. The last president of the line, Tabor businessman Alexander Bloedel, secured two extensions on the debt but by early 1933 the end was at hand. The small railroad passed into history on October 10, 1934, when all assets, including the locomotive, rolling stock and rails were sold at auction to the Burlington line for $7,735. The remains were sold as scrap. The demise of the T&N did not go unnoticed. Newspapers throughout the state carried the news with the Oelwein Daily Register, in northeast Iowa, printing a brief but fitting epitaph, noting the train had given “dreams to many.” But one dream did not die: the belief that small-town kindness and mutual support would live on in deeds and thoughts, best symbolized by engineer Lybarger’s wife, Fannie. Their home was close enough to the Tabor terminal to see the depot from the kitchen window and when her husband worked late she would bring him and his crew supper.

This article was written by Chuck Douglass for the Tabor Historical Society. Used with permission of the Historical Society.