Lushton’s Railroads

A previous post discussed Lushton, Nebraska, where Grandpa and Grandma and family lived for a number of years, as an example of how one might examine an etiological tale in order to judge its historical accuracy (see here). Shortly after publishing that post, I discovered that even the clear evidence of an 1889 railroad map is not as precise as one might wish.

If I understand correctly (I admit that I may have some details wrong), both the consensus view that the Lushton railroad was the Kansas City & Omaha and the Fitzpatrick claim that the railroad was the St. Joseph & Grand Island can be regarded as accurate, although the consensus account, we should note, is the more accurate of the two. Several reports from the late 1880s reveal how both of the etiologies can be considered true.

The 30 July 1886 (p. 533) issue of The Railway Gazette reports the incorporation of a new railroad (for the original, see here):

The Kansas City & Omaha, we learn from this account, was incorporated in Nebraska in early 1886 with the express purpose of building and operating a line from Fairfield to Stromsburg. This is exactly the line that we saw in the 1889 map in the earlier post (here). We cut off the map just north of McCool Junction, to be sure, but the line continued north through York and Benedict and all the way to Stromsburg and beyond. In 1886, therefore, the Kansas City & Omaha Railroad was founded to connect the St. Joseph & Grand Island line in the south (which went through Fairfield) with a Union Pacific and eventually a Burlington line farther north.

There is still more to the story. Later in 1886, in the 19 November issue of The Railway Gazette (p. 804 here), we read a report that helps us to connect the various threads of the story.

The key lines are at the beginning. Within months of the Kansas City & Omaha Railroad coming into existence, the St. Joseph & Grand Island Railroad amended the articles of incorporation of the Kansas City & Omaha Railroad. Clearly, this could happen only if the St. Joseph & Grand Island exercised complete control over the Kansas City & Omaha. In fact, the November report above leaves little doubt about that fact when it states that the Kansas City & Omaha “was organized to build this company [the St. Joseph & Grand Island] branches and extensions in Nebraska.” A railroad history website confirms this: “ Union Pacific organized the Kansas City & Omaha Railroad, and operated it as part of what was called the ‘St. Joseph & Grand Island Division’” (here).

Clearly, the two railroads were closely connected within the Union Pacific family (recall that the Union Pacific had purchased the St. Joseph & Grand Island in 1880). In fact, they even shared some of the same officers, most significantly William Lush. He was, according to his obituary (see previous post), chief engineer of both the St. Joseph & Grand Island and of the Kansas City & Omaha. 

Other sources confirm this. The 6 August 1886 issue of The Railroad Gazette (p. 549 here) reports that Lush was named chief engineer of the St. Joseph & Grand Island Railroad on 1 August of that year. However, two years later the 6 April 1888 issue of The Railway Age (p. 226 here) refers to him as chief engineer of the Kansas City & Omaha Railroad. As we saw in the prior post, a month prior to that, the 2 March 1888 issue of The Railway Age announced that Lush had been serving as chief engineer of the St. Joseph & Grand Island Railroad and had been promoted, effective 29 February, to general manager. Another source reports that he served in that position through May 1888 (see here). 

In light of this evidence, it seems clear that Lush was chief engineer for the parent company the St. Joseph & Grand Island and its subsidiary the Kansas City & Omaha at the same time. The extensive overlap between the two companies explains why some claim that the St. Joseph & Grand Island laid the track through Lushton and others state that the Kansas City & Omaha gave birth to the village. In fact, both claims are true, although the latter is the more precise of the two. As with many etiologies, the historical reality proves to be somewhat more complex than the tale implies.

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Since it seems a shame to lose track of some of the nuggets discovered during this research, I list a few additional sources and comments.

• 1897 Galbraith’s Railway Service Maps, Nebraska: here (the colored lines make it easy to see how the various railway systems connected)

• a brief history of the St. Joseph & Grand Island Railroad: here

• a description of the Kansas City & Omaha Railroad: “Locomotives of The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad: 1855–1904, Part 2.” The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin, 1937, 4–70. Available online here.

The Kansas City & Omaha Railroad, Stromsburg to Fairbury, Nebr., McCool Jct. to K. C. & O. Jct. [this is the Lushton line], and Fairfield to Alma, Nebr. was acquired by the B. & M. R.  [Burlington & Missouri River] in 1902. The ten engines acquired with this road were small Moguls and were not built to Burlington standards. (53)

• a frustratingly fragmented mention of William Lush and Daniel McCool in the 1887 The Railway Age (vol. 12, p. 246). The 1887 volume is not visible online except in snippet form. We pick up the report in mid-sentence:

… and then make a circle around the city, returning to the depot of the St. Joe road. The incorporators are D. McCool and William Lush of the St. Joseph & Grand Island railway, and William Kerr. A. L. Clark, W. H. Lanning, Oswalt Oliver, Geo. H. Pratt and J. M. Hagan of Hastings.

The readings of some of the Hastings names are uncertain, but these could be the “local capitalists” involved in the incorporation of the Kansas City & Omaha Railroad in early 1886. If so, then both Daniel McCool and William Lush were part of the incorporating group, which would then explain nicely why two towns established along the Kansas City & Omaha line were named after them. The 1887 issue of The Railway Age has been digitized but is currently mislabeled as Railway Review. Perhaps Google Books will someday correct this error and make this issue visible, so we can see the rest of this intriguing story.