David Holberg sits in his pickup in the middle of the field as I take my inaugural ride on the Joplin & Springfield Railway.
The miniature railway line will once again offer free train rides for children and young at heart 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 22 and 23, and the same hours next weekend.
Holberg, now 80, needs a wheelchair to get around. His voice is a whisper. Life already was physically difficult for him, and then he contracted COVID in 2021.
“It just hammered me,” he says.
I'm in the green replica locomotive next to his daughter, Carla, 51, who drives the train along its two-mile, 24-minute journey through trees on a big field that is off Airport Boulevard, a mile south of the airport.
She left Chicago and become No. 1 assistant
She departed Chicago a few years ago to help care for him and, in the process, became his No. 1 railway assistant.
“I know more about an engine now than I ever did before,” she tells me as we pass the plastic skulls and fake tombstones that border the tracks.
Nothing is meant to be too frightening, she says.
“The intention was always to be Halloween related, but not gory or scary,” she says.
Be forewarned: There is one coffin along the route that might suddenly open as the train passes.
First free train ride was in 2002
Holberg and his wife Virgie decided to create a miniature railway for children in 1998, when they bought a red replica locomotive from her brother. He had operated an amusement park in Kansas City.
They soon had two locomotives, but the red one currently is disabled, in need of a flywheel. Carla worries that the lines to board passenger cars might be long this weekend because there is only one working locomotive.
The first free train ride open to the public was in 2002.
The railway is open on the Fourth of July and on weekends prior to Halloween. COVID shut down operations for about 18 months.
This year there is a twist.
The railway line is for sale
Holberg wants to sell the railway and the equipment — the locomotives, the track, everything. He estimates the cost to be $200,000 to $300,000.
There are the two locomotives, two miles of 24-inch gauge track (meaning the rails are 2 feet apart) and 10 passenger cars, which seat 14 people each.
He says he is tired and no longer up to the task of maintaining and operating the Joplin & Springfield Railway.
There is a very important third party in any future transaction.
Erlen Group (Springfield Underground) owns the land
Holberg does not own the land where the railway runs. He does not own the old three-story house, built in about 1880, where he lives. It sits across Airport Road, on the west side.
The house and land are owned by Springfield Underground, which is now part of the Erlen Group.
Springfield Underground was created by the Greisemer family. Holberg is a family friend.
Someday in the future, Holberg says, the company will mine limestone from under the field where the Joplin-Springfield Railway runs. He most certainly will be long gone by the time that happens, he says.
The Griesemers know of his plans to sell, he tells me.
They must approve any agreement.
The railway would have to run as it is
It cannot be an amusement park, Holberg explains. It has to exist pretty much as is — a hobby, a passion, a good time for children that does not cost their parents a cent.
“It has to be almost like a marriage,” he says. “Someone who's willing to cooperate and make an investment. If they want to build an amusement park, I would be the first one to say, ‘No, it won't work.' It has to be somebody who likes trains. Who likes farmland. It has to be somebody who has the money.”
And the reward?
“The people and the pride that you have in watching them have a good time.”
Another consideration is the cost of insurance. Holberg didn't mention that to me, but he mentioned it in a YouTube video that is linked on the railway's website.
He says on the video: “The first shock in this business is what it costs to insure it.”
Travel by train was part of family vacations
Holberg grew up in Topeka. When he was a boy, the Rock Island Railway ran through town, and the Santa Fe Railway operated there, as well.
He fell in love with trains.
And eventually trolley cars.
Also airplanes, but let's stay on track.
Carla is the middle child of three girls. When she was little, vacations typically involved travel by train.
In San Francisco, she says, her father made sure the family rode and appreciated the trolley cars.
She sometimes overlooks how important trains have been in her life.
“I guess not everyone had my dad growing up,” she says.
Holberg and wife Virgie built the railway
Holberg's three children are from a prior marriage. Later in life, he married Virginia “Virgie” Lou Asherst in 1993.
Carla marvels that her father and Virgie were up in years when they built the railway, including the laying of the track and constructing a railway roundtable.
“I don't know how he did it in his 50s, with his wife. I don't know how she did it.”
Virgie died in 2016.
Why volunteer? What would Virgie say?
Over the years, there have been volunteers who, for example, make Halloween displays to place along the railway and who fix locomotive engines or track.
Jon Goodnight is one of them. He works on the trains and serves as an engineer.
“I'm the biggest kid on the train,” he tells me.
I ask why he does it and he tells me Virgie was asked that question often by media folks like me and she told him how she always answered:
“Because we can.”
Not quite ready to say it's fun
It's just three people on this run Thursday afternoon.
Carla and I sit in the replica locomotive, and Shannon Cay Bowers of the Hauxeda is in the open passenger car behind us taking photos and shooting video.
It's late afternoon and the angled autumnal sun shines strong. Some leaves have changed to red and brown. Green hedge apples are on the ground.
Carla wears her engineer's overalls and her flat-billed engineer's cap.
She is not quite at the point to feel that driving the train is “fun.”
“It is getting there as I get more confident,” she says.
It sure looks like steam, but it's not
She grants permission for me to pull a little rope. The train whistle is real and piercing and I don't think I want to pull the rope again.
The bell sound is real. The rhythmic huffing-and-chuffing is recorded, but it increases in pace and urgency as the speed of the train builds.
She sounds the recorded whistle before entering the woods to inform wildlife that we're coming.
It looks like steam coming from the smokestack, but it's not. The four-cylinder engine is powered by gas. Kerosene is sprinkled over the manifold to create the faux steam.
This is a slightly different labor of love
Carla takes this role seriously.
She feels some anxiety, she says, especially when the train has four-passenger cars attached — filled with children.
Not a problem, though. She will carry on. This is labor of love, for her, too.
Not so much of trains, but of the man who sits in the pickup.
This is Pokin Around column No. 67.
