All about the community of model railroading and rail enthusiasm
June 26, 2023
By TIM BLACKWELL/Cowcatcher Magazine
Thinking of train stations stirs memories of bygone Beaux Arts and Victorian palaces, or even of old depots that doubled as freight and passenger stops. They were the epicenters of early America, where family and friends reunited and business travelers frequented.
When railroads plotted their lines in the early 19th century they sought to establish stations along the route. The railroad enlisted men like W.V. Shipley, who gauged interest among settlements and towns to be a stop on the railroad.
Some were on board, others were skeptical. Those that were all in got a depot, usually small, or a platform. You’ll read about Mr. Shipley on the following pages in our stories about the HO Rock Island Lines. He established stations on the Des Moines, Iowa Falls & Northern Railway, which became the Rock Island.
The railroads plotted stations along their routes, but they weren’t always where denizens caught a train or dropped off packages. Stations noted other points along the way, like a water stop, siding or industry.
The reference to the Holliday, KS, on our March/April 2023 cover perplexed one reader. By the way, if you didn’t see that cover shot, it’s a beauty from our Stan Ujka of a BNSF GP28 leading a local through Holliday in 2019.
In his 75 years of living in Kansas and working at one time for the Kansas Department of Transportation, the reader had never heard of Holliday.
Your esteemed publisher attempted to explain that the place in the photo was near the former site of the town named after Cyrus K. Holliday, mayor of Topeka, KS, and the first president of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway. A railroad legend.
Holliday was a small settlement platted in 1882, and it flourished around an AT&SF depot that came three years later. Like many railroad towns, Holliday has faded into the landscape, nearly wiped out by a flood in 1951. What was left eventually burned or was abandoned.
In 1968 the city of Shawnee bought the city for the land.
Not much remains except milepost 13.4 at the junction of BNSF’s Emporia Subdivision and Topeka Subdivision.
Mr. Ujka, a railroader, set us straight.
Railroads refer to stations as significant locations, maybe the sites of current or former stations, but they aren’t necessarily the same as the city and state. A railroad structure may or not exist.
In some cases, stations may be next to each other. An industry on the east side of a main track may be listed as one station, and an industry on the west listed as another. The idea is to avoid confusion between two industries, or between cars loaded with different commodities destined for the same town.
Most importantly, stations are used for shipping purposes. When a customer/shipper bills a carload of freight, the origin and destination on the waybill must reflect the railroad station rather than the mailing address. Sort of like postal stations within a city that has different zip codes – and no long line.
Like any good railroader, Ujka tends to use the station for the location of his photos because it can be more precise than the city or state.
Our reader did a little digging and found a 2017 Kansas DOT railroad station map from the Bureau of Transportation Planning. And there it is, Holliday, about 12 miles west of the Amtrak Station in Kansas City, MO.
Holliday Station is No. 61930 on BNSF’s Emporia Subdivision, one of nine stations between Kansas City and Topeka.
The depot is long gone. Google Earth shows Holliday swallowed on the north by Johnson County’s wastewater treatment plant and a massive landfill to the south. In between, two of the Emporia Subdivision tracks widen to three with the junction of the Topeka Subdivision line.
Cyrus K. might only sigh, but at least his railroad remembers him. Railroad operators know those tracks connect in Holliday.
Tim Blackwell’s column appears in each issue of Cowcatcher Magazine. This column was published in the May/June 2023 issue.
