A little more about "Old Ironsides" & Red Oak

Bernard G. Corbin

A piece of correspondence dated Jan. 23, 1969, turned up at the museum on Friday as brave historical society board and staff members were restoring order to the Stephens House basement, one of our few storage areas. The old letter had literally fallen through the cracks 50 years ago, then resurfaced to tell us a little more about the locomotive (above) known as "Old Ironsides," shown in a photograph also from the museum collection.

I've written about the locomotive before (you'll can find that post by following this link). The magnificent beast stood on the Iowa State University campus in Ames from 1907 until sometime during the early 1940s when university officials who once had been interested in developing a railroading museum decided instead to send it off to be recycled during a World War II-related scrap drive.

The locomotive had been part of the railroad building equipment used by Chariton's Smith H. Mallory, a major post-Civil War rail contractor in the Midwest and Plains states, then given by his daughter, Jessie (Mallory) Thayer, to Iowa State after his death during 1903.

Here's how the Iowa State College "Bulletin" of May, 1907, acknowledged the gift: "The estate of S.H. Mallory, of Chariton, Iowa, has presented a narrow gauge locomotive, one of the first in service on the mountain roads of Colorado. The valve mechanism is of the Waelschert type and the drivers and leading wheels are on a truck with the cylinders entirely separate from the boilers. The engine is a very interesting machine and will be the nucleus for a museum of railroad engineering."

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The letter was written by Bernard G. Corbin (1907-1988), at the time plant superintendent of the Murphy Calendar Co. in Red Oak, in response to a query from Don Fuller, of Chariton, freight agent for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, who had become acquainted with Corbin during five years in a similar position in Red Oak.

Corbin was (and remains posthumously) a noted expert on Burlington Route history and equipment, author of "Steam Locomotives of the Burlington Route" (1960), "Burlington in Transition" (1967) and "Across Iowa on the Keokuk & Western and Humeston & Shenandoah Railroads" (1996). Here's the text of the letter that relates to the locomotive:

"Dear Don,

"The engine in question did help build the grades through here (Red Oak). It was narrow gauge and from the rack on the tender appears to have been for wood. I once saw a photo of a work train west of the depot with an engine on it that I believe to be this engine. They built a spider-web trestle from the depot west to the hill --- about one and a half miles --- from cottonwood poles.  This train was on the trestle with dirt dumps filling it in. As you probably know, these poles rotted out and about 1948 or 1950, they came in and did grouting work across the fill, pumping concrete into the cavities.

"The engine, I understand, stood over at Creston for some time awaiting sale. You probably know that the grade was built through here in 1902. I don't know just how long it awaited sale, but I am believing it was near five years.

"It was then donated to the college rather than letting it be scrapped. The do-gooders let it be scrapped during World War II. Too bad."

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There's no point in crying over spilled milk, as Granny used to say --- the locomotive is long gone. But it's still interesting to know more about it and to gain a little insight into some of the engineering techniques used to build what still is one of the busiest rail lines across Iowa, now Burlington, Northern & Santa Fe. The letter now is filed with the photograph and we'll not lose track of it again.