EARL WATT
• Leader & Times
While Liberal considers ways over and around the railroad tracks, there is no doubt the community owes its existence to being connected to the rail.
When the Rock Island Railroad chose Liberal as its termination spot more than 130 years ago, that gave the fledgling community the edge over other regional competitors. Liberal became the county seat and is the largest community along the rail line west of Wichita in Kansas.
Once the spike hit the hard dusty prairie, it forged a connection that has continued to move products and people across the continent.
To maintain that history, Tony Martinez, a retired fourth generation railroad worker, worked with the Seward County Historical Society to relocate the crane that was used to pull cars from derailed trains trying to pass the Cimarron River from the Coronado Museum back to the depot. That started Martinez on a project of creating an historic train park that now has a baggage car and push car in addition to the crane. Martinez is also working on locating a caboose.
But the baggage car was primered only, and Martinez wanted to return it to its original appearance.
“That car came form The Coast Starlight,” Martinez said. “It ran around the Oakland area. Then when passenger trains went away, it was repurposed to a maintenance material car. It was in Tucson, then Herrington, Kan. When it was retired in Herrington, the bridge crew had it. They asked if I would like a car for the display, and I said, ‘Sure.’ It was on the next train from Herrington to Liberal. It came in and sat until we had funds to move it. Then we got funds to paint it. It was a mail and baggage car. Inside, they had a sorting rack, and a mail bag was tossed off at each town plus other freight.”
Martinez found a photo of the original Southern Pacific Coast Starlight baggage car, and he gave that to Siretta Lemmons of Touch of Class Painting. From that, she was able to match the bright red and blazing orange along with creating stencils to replace the lettering.
“They wanted to restore it back to those colors,” Lemmons said. “They got a grant from Union Pacific, and we put the bid in, and Lidia (Gray) and Tony (Martinez) got us some pictures, and we came in and took it back to the colors and the decorating scheme they had. One of the guys had tried to start priming it, and we had to go in and do some hand tool cleaning because there is no sandblasting allowed in the city. We washed it down, put rust resistant primer and took it from there with the paint.”
The new paint job brought the century-old car back to life, and additional paint was applied to the accessories.
“They had a blue cart sitting behind the crane,” Lemmons said. “Up front, they had a green and red baggage cart. We repainted that, too. It was dilapidated.”
The project took them about two weeks to complete, and they also used specialty paints to not only match the color but also to handle the weather conditions without fading too quickly.
“We used a water acrylic from Sherwin Williams,” Lemmons said. “It holds its color longer than old oil base coatings. It won’t fade in a few years. It will keep it longer and is environmentally friendly.”
The project was funded by a grant from the Union Pacific Foundation and the local Depot Heritage organization. City of Liberal grant writer Karen LaFreniere worked with Martinez and Gray to present the project.
“The rail is not going anywhere,” LaFreniere said. “We have to maintain our relationship with them. They have been good working with us including the grant for the Grier House and being able to access the property. It is their property. We own the Depot and the Grier House, but they are on their right of way. We work together with them.”
That partnership has been fostered with Martinez and has led to a train park that now features the baggage car emblazoned with the West Coast sunshine, another historic connection to the push for the rail to connect America form the Atlantic to the Pacific.
“Let’s not forget passengers, too,” Hook said. “My mother arrived from the Italian Alps in 1947 on that train.”
Gray is known as the authority on local history, and maintaining a connection to the rail was important to preserve for the future.
“If it weren’t for the railroad we wouldn’t have the growth and the businesses, and we wouldn’t have the county seat,” she said.
She also pointed out other ties to history in Liberal have connections to the railroad. When the U.S. Army selected Liberal as the place to build a pilot training facility for World War II, the railroad played a key role.
“We are doing a history book on the army airfield,” she said. “All that equipment came in by rail. The railroad built a spur to the army airbase.”
Keeping that history alive is what led the local enthusiasts to partner up, and from the moment in 2012 when the crane was first placed by the Rock Island Depot, improvement continue to be made. With the new paint job, Lemmons hopes it makes the park more appealing to more visitors.
“A lot of local people don’t stop and look,” Lemmons said. “But Betty (Symons) and Rozelle (Webb) at the Chamber said they have a lot of travelers that do. I’m hoping by making it more visible people will stop and look. When it was sitting there sad and ratty looking, people weren’t interested. Hopefully now that it’s painted people will stop”
The results have been impressive to those who organized the project.
“It looks great,” LaFreniere said. “We are going to do some more over there if we can get additional funding to make it an area that attracts families.”
Gray agreed.
“I am very happy,” she said. “It looks great and is eye catching. People are already taking pictures in front of it. There’s a little rail fan community, and this will give them something else to look at.”
Martinez was also thankful to Touch of Class Painting for their work, and he also said there are plans for more.
“I am really happy with the paint job,” he said. “It looks so much better than the primer job. Serrita (Lemmons) and her crew did an excellent job just going off pictures. Now I’d like to get a drinking fountain there eventually. Seymour Rogers gave away water. It would be nice to have a drinking fountain and water station.”
While many find the trains that cross the tracks through Liberal today a disruption, Martinez has a different perspective.
“I still go down and watch the trains go by,” he said. “That’s the economy going by. UPS, FedEx trailers — You can tell what the economy is doing. Grain goes from here to the east and west. I know there are discussions about an overpass, but the trains won’t go away.”
