Philadelphia Inquirerer, Front Page (Page A1), Wednesday, February 24, 2015:
A replica of the train that carried Abraham Lincoln’s body home to Illinois. Organizers hope to retrace its route in reverse, beginning in May. Historic Railroad Equipment Association
A funeral car replica in an early stage. The lavish original was to have been used for presidential travel but Lincoln was slain before seeing it. Above, The Inquirer reported on the train in 1865.
These two brass hand lanterns have been authenticated as having been on the 1865 train that carried President Abraham Lincoln’s body. Historic Railroad Equipment Association
The project started with David Kloke of Bartlett, Ill., who began building the locomotive and tender about six years ago. He is shown with a decorative feature over the wheels.
The train that carried Lincoln’s body home to Illinois. A spokeswoman for the re-creation project, quoting Lincoln, calls it “a grassroots effort … ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ ” McLean County (Ill.) Museum of History via Bloomington Pantagraph
TRAIN REPLICA MAY STOP HERE
Commemorating Lincoln’s Last Ride
A working-replica locomotive, tender, and funeral car are being readied for memorial trip.
By Edward Colimore INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Along hundreds of miles of railroad tracks, mourners stood silently, reverently, as a doleful whistle and wisps of smoke and steam announced the approaching funeral train. Many wept and bowed their heads as it passed.
In towns where the locomotive stopped, thousands surged forward, pushing and jostling to get a better view. Bands played melancholy tunes and preachers offered up solemn prayers.
They focused on a dark maroon railcar, swathed in black crepe, carrying the martyred Abraham Lincoln, who had come on another train four years earlier to tell throngs at Independence Hall that he’d “rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender” the country.
On April 22, 1865 — a week after the president’s assassination — Lincoln returned to the same hallowed place, his body to be viewed by more than 300,000 who filed by his coffin in the Assembly Room, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed.
Now, another train is being prepared, 150 years later, to follow part of the 1,600-mile route from Washington —through such cities as Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and Trenton
— to Springfield, Ill., where Lincoln was buried.
A working-replica locomotive, tender, and Lincoln funeral car, valued at about $3 million, are nearly ready for what organizers hope will be a re-creation of the 16th president’s journey — in reverse.
It would begin in May in Springfield, where Lincoln’s trip ended, and continue through the summer and fall. Visits have already been confirmed in towns across Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky, said organizers, who expect to add other cities.
Details of a possible stop in Philadelphia are not available, though local supporters have suggested displaying the train in front of the National Constitution Center.
In the meantime, funds are being raised through a website and Facebook page — an additional $100,000 is needed — to transport the train on flatbed semitrailers.
The 1865 trip “gave the entire country an opportunity to grieve and heal,” said Scott Trostel, historical consultant for the 2015 Lincoln Funeral Train project, the nonprofit arranging the event. “There were ceremonies in virtually every city to memorialize the man, and everybody came.
“The whole community was involved, providing bands, decorating stations, and picking flowers,” said Trostel, of Fletcher, Ohio, author of The Lincoln Funeral Train — The Final Journey and National Funeral. “That’s the way it worked in 1865 and the only way it will work today.”
The assassination triggered a great public outpouring of grief, and the funeral train helped make the tragedy a shared experience, said Andy Waskie, a Temple University professor, historian, and author of Philadelphia and the Civil War —Arsenal of the Union. Nothing like it had ever happened before.
The re-creation of that time 150 years later “brings alive a tremendous occasion throughout the country,” Waskie said. “We shouldn’t let this anniversary go by.”
The project has been “a grassroots effort,” said Shannon Brown, a spokeswoman for the 2015 Lincoln Funeral Train. “It really is, to quote Lincoln, ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ ”
Earlier donations for the train’s construction included $30,000 from Fisher Nuts Corp., $5,000 and $10,000 amounts from individuals, and recurring amounts from one donor that have reached $3,000. Most of the donations — from supporters in several states — have been for $25 or less.
“If we make this commemorative journey, it will be the people building this train,” Brown said. “It’s their train.”
The project began with master mechanic David Kloke, 68, of Bartlett, Ill., whose interest in trains and Lincoln led him about six years ago to re-create a 1865 period locomotive he calls Leviathan 63 and its tender, using National Park Service patterns.
“I was interested in building the Lincoln car because it was so historic,” said Kloke, who is now completing it at an Elgin, Ill., shop. “It was built by the government in Alexandria, Va.
“It was the first Air Force One — and it was gorgeous,” he said. “Lincoln thought it was too fancy.”
The president “didn’t want the public perception to be, ‘Look at me; look at how the government is spending money,’ ” saidBrown. “It was well-appointed with walnut and mahogany, and had a marble washstand.”
Lincoln was scheduled to see the car for the first time on April 15 but never made it, said Trostel. He was shot April 14 and died on the 15th.
So the lavish railcar that was to have been used by Lincoln during his presidency became his funeral car, carrying his coffin as well as the coffin of his son Willie, who had died earlier.
By 1911, the car was owned by promoter Thomas Lowery of Minneapolis and stored in a shed, where it was destroyed in a brushfire.
The re-created version is based on photographs and other research. Its color was determined from the analysis of paint on a window frame that was taken as a souvenir from the original car, said Brown, a marketing specialist at Indiana University and a Lincoln buff who volunteered her services.
The project has been picking up steam over the last several months as other volunteers have joined the cause. One of them, Ainsley Wonderling of Lake Villa, Ill., was looking to furnish the Lincoln car when she came across two pre-Civil War parlor chairs on Craigslist.
The chairs were once part of a slaveholding Alabama plantation belonging to the ancestors of Marybeth Saunders, who ultimately donated them to the Lincoln funeral-train project.
“It seemed to be the best outcome for the chairs,” said Saunders, of South Bend, Ind. “It’s such a beautiful atonement for my family history.
“These chairs will be sitting on either side of the replica of Lincoln’s casket. How can you say no to that? I had no choice. Every ancestor was speaking through me, saying yes.”
The funeral train arrived at the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad depot on South Broad Street about 4:30 p.m. on April 22, 1865.
Lincoln’s remains were eventually transferred — past houses shrouded in black — to Independence Hall, where, on April 23, lines of people entered a door and exited, using temporary steps, through a window, said Waskie, the Temple professor. Many waited hours and some passed out from exhaustion.
Lincoln had planned to visit the Union League’s then-new building at B r o a d a n d S a n s o m Streets, where, starting on March 23, a new exhibit, “1865: Triumph and Tragedy,” will highlight the end of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination. It will be open to the public from 3 to 6p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 1 to 4 p.m. every second Saturday of the month, for about a year.
The funeral train left April 24 from Kensington Station, stopping briefing in Trenton before passing through Princeton, New Brunswick, and Newark. It arrived at Jersey City, w h e r e a cl o c k h a d stopped at 7:20 a.m., the approximate time of Lincoln’s death. Then, it was on to New York and other cities.
“It’s time to recall Lincoln’s role in death as well as life,” Waskie said. ecolimore@phillynews.com
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