The City of Stillwater owns a steam locomotive.
Did you know that? Neither did some members of the Stillwater City Council, who recently learned that the city owns Northern Pacific Locomotive No. 328, which is housed at the Minnesota Transportation Museum in St. Paul, pursuant to a 32-year lease agreement that expires in 2031.
“It was news to me,” said Stillwater City Council member Larry Odebrecht. “Do we have any boats or rocket ships?”
Museum officials recently contacted Stillwater officials to see if the city would like to donate the train to the museum or extend the lease.
The locomotive needs some major work to make it operable, and museum officials don’t want to spend the time or money unless they know it will be in their possession for the foreseeable future, said Scott Hippert, the museum’s executive director.
The estimated restoration costs are between $100,000, if volunteers are used, and $500,000.
“We would consider making an investment like that if we either owned it or we knew we were going to be able to use it for another 30 years,” Hippert said. “It would be really great to be able to fire it up and use it out in our train yard here. The last time it ran was 1998. The boilers (on steam locomotives) have to be rebuilt every 15 years, so these things get expensive to run.”
The Stillwater City Council at a Dec. 6 workshop directed staff to contact museum officials to discuss extending the lease agreement and see if they were interested in buying it.
“If the museum is willing to hold onto it and restore it, we should extend the lease for another 20, 30 years,” Odebrecht said in an interview. “It will keep the tax cost low and the history alive. Basically, we’re trading time for money.”
The city hired Edward Biggs, a senior appraiser with the American Society of Appraisers who specializes in rail equipment, locomotive, railcar and fleet valuations, to appraise the locomotive. Biggs, who has spent more than 40 years in the railroad industry, reviewed the mechanical records, historical and recent photographs and historical records of Engine 328 and concluded its market value is $120,000 to $150,000. To get the highest value, Biggs wrote, the locomotive should be sold at auction.
“There are potential buyers of steam locomotives that range from the very savvy and knowledgeable to rail fans with more money than brains,” Biggs wrote in his report. “The savvy and knowledgeable buyers will pay based on condition and make deductions for the unknowns.”
Built for Chicago Southern
Engine 328 was built in August 1905 at the American Locomotive Co.’s Rogers plant in Paterson, N.J. It’s one of a group of 20 “ten-wheeler” locomotives ordered by the Chicago Southern Railway, according to Brent Peterson, executive director of the Washington County Historical Society. But the Chicago Southern Railway could afford to pay for only six of the engines, so the other 14 were sold to other groups, he said.
Northern Pacific Railway bought 10 of them for $14,500 each. In February 1907, the company gave the engines road numbers ranging from 320 to 329. A year later, Engine 328 was assigned to the Northern Pacific’s Minnesota division, which ran from Staples to Dilworth, he said.
“It became best known while on the Lake Superior Division of the Northern Pacific,” Peterson said. “That included the run from White Bear Lake to Duluth and from Staples to Ashland (Wis.).”
Engine 328 also ran for many years on the Taylors Falls branch, which ran from Wyoming, Minn., on Northern Pacific’s main line between St. Paul and Duluth, to the town of Taylors Falls. A one-stall engine house at Taylors Falls provided a home for Engine 328 when it was assigned there, he said.
With declining traffic, the Taylors Falls branch was abandoned in 1948, and by June 1950, Engine 328 “was obsolete and no longer needed,” Peterson said.
Saved in Stillwater
The locomotive was slated to be dismantled, but a group of railroad enthusiasts worked to preserve it and donate it to the city. In 1955, Engine 328 was placed in Lowell Park in downtown Stillwater as a tourist attraction.
After two decades in Lowell Park, “being subjected to frequent flooding and in need of restoration, in 1975, members of the Minnesota Transportation Museum asked the Stillwater City Council if it would be willing to donate Engine 328 to the Museum, and in exchange, they would restore it, operate it and display it,” City Attorney Kori Land wrote in a memo to the Stillwater City Council.
“Instead of donating or otherwise selling Engine 328, the city entered into a 30-year lease with the Museum that gave them the authority to restore it, operate it and display it at their museum, but they had to allow the city to use it for Lumberjack Days and other local celebrations,” she wrote. “The museum was responsible for transportation to and from Stillwater for those local celebrations.”
The locomotive was to be returned to the city either at the end of the lease or if Engine 328 was not operational for a two-year period, according to Land.
It took five years for the museum to restore Engine 328 to operable condition, she wrote. From 1987 to 1999, the museum ran it on the St. Croix Valley Railway, touring Osceola, Wis., Marine on St. Croix, Taylors Falls and Dresser, Wis. The museum also honored its requirement to return it for local Stillwater celebrations, according to Land.
In 1997, museum officials contacted the city again, with a renewed request for Stillwater to donate Engine 328 to the museum. City officials at that time determined that “retaining ownership was important, so they amended the lease and extended it for another 30 years,” Land wrote.
That appears to be what will happen again.
“I definitely don’t want it back, quite frankly,” council member David Junker said at the workshop on Dec. 6. “I don’t even think we should sell it. I think it should stay where it’s at with a longer-term lease or just give it to them.”
Said Mayor Ted Kozlowski: “We certainly don’t want it back, as cool as it would be,” he said. “Frankly, I’m not too keen to give it away if it’s worth $150,000. Should we give them the option of buying it? If they want to buy it, sold.”
