Columbus landmark turns 50

COLUMBUS - All decked out in its holiday glitter, No. 561 lights Columbus' southern doorstep and is a beacon for the season's visitors to the community.

The former Union Pacific Railroad locomotive, festooned in bright strings of lights, offers a special holiday greeting this season from its site in the front of Pawnee Park along 33rd Avenue. One of the community's most recognizable landmarks, the steam locomotive celebrates 50 years on the community's threshold on Monday.

“It's in pretty good shape cosmetically,'' said James Hannah, who helped spearhead a renovation project on the more than 100-year-old locomotive in the mid-1980s. Hannah, co-owner of Tran-Tech Corp., is the president of the Great Plains Chapter of the National Highway Historical Society.

The locomotive could use a fresh coat of paint and some new lettering, Hannah said.

It was quite a feat of teamwork to get the locomotive to its display site.

A 10-year-old Dave Kudron watched the locomotive's move in November 1955 along the gravel roads west of 33rd Avenue from his perch on his dad's Caterpillar heavy loader. “It was my turn to ride with dad that day,” Kudron said.

Union Pacific downloaded the locomotive off its main rail line west of the 33rd Avenue viaduct.

Kudron's father, Ed Kudron, operated a local excavation business and did a lot of work for the city. The heavy loader was needed to lift the rail sections as the crew of 25-30 workers leap-frogged the route to the engine's final resting place in the park.

Two 30- to 40-foot rail sections, with ties attached, would be bolted together, and the locomotive was moved along by disconnecting the trailing section and moving it to the front, where it was rebolted, and continuing that process for three-quarters of a mile until the machine was on the display site.

“I was told to watch and stay out of the way,'' Kudron said. “It was fun to watch those guys.”

The area's landscape was considerably different.

Kudron said Memorial Stadium was there is 1955, along with the Pawnee Bar and Dairy Queen. A fast-food restaurant was where the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce building now stands, with a couple of service stations also in the area.

The community's connection with the railroad may seem a little frayed today, especially with the recent controversies over building viaducts and closing at-grade crossings. The park locomotive display can be a reminder that the railroad was here at the beginning, and is still here today.

U.P. and its locomotives are the reason that Columbus is here, Hannah said. The original town was built on Sixth and Seventh streets at 20th and 21st avenues, but when the railroad tracks were built further north, the buildings were moved, he said.

“The town moved up to where the tracks were,” he said.

The railroad system was a labor intensive industry in the early decades following its completion. At one time, U.P. employed more than 500 workers in Columbus, including more than 200 carpenters.

Many people would be surprised to learn that the railroad still employs more than 100 people in the community, Hannah said.