(peaceful music) - [Voiceover] The following program is a production of Pioneer Public Television.

- [Voiceover] This program on Pioneer Public Television is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

Additional support provided by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a non-profit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom in Southwestern Minnesota.

shalomhillfarm.org.

The Arrowwood Resort and Conference Center, your ideal choice for Minnesota resorts, offering luxury town homes, 18 holes of golf, Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash Waterpark, and much more.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a relaxing vacation or great location for an event.

ExploreAlex.com.

Easy to get to, hard to leave.

(slow, gentle orchestral music) - Welcome to Postcards, I'm Dana Johnson.

Today we travel to the End-O-Line Railroad Park and Museum in Currie, Minnesota.

But first, join us in Rollag, at the annual Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion, held every Labor Day weekend since 1954.

(soft, deep string chord) - [Voiceover] Around Labor Day, the Minnesota State Fair draws more than 100,000 people a day to the Twin Cities.

At the same time, a perhaps less prestigious, but just as proud entity, draws 50 or 60,000 people Labor Day weekend, to tiny Rollag, Minnesota.

When hundreds of thousands of dollars buys rides, rides, rides at the Minnesota State Fair, not a penny buys rides in Rollag, Minnesota, they're all free.

And rides there are.

And parades, big parades.

Twice a day.

- [Voiceover] On the showground, this is a 1899 return-flue Minneapolis engine.

- [Voiceover] Things tend to move slowly at the Wester Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion, but move they do.

Nothing is on static display here.

Things work.

And the people who work them seem to feel they're infected, if you will.

- I started in Miniature Land when I was younger, probably about 10 years ago, and then started with the steam there, just got bit by what we call the bug.

(cranking) - [Voiceover] When the steam bug bit me, it bit me really hard.

- [Voiceover] And folks do jobs, jobs like shovel coal into a boiler firebox, not done by their gender years ago, and they get a kick out of it.

- Just doin' a good job, it's just fun.

- [Voiceover] And they're civil in their interactions.

- Honey, you wanna blow the whistle?

(whistle blows, increasing in intensity) (gentle piano music) - [Voiceover] Yep, this is the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion.

2,000 people, volunteers, every one of 'em, getting together to relive a little history and put on a show.

(energetic guitar music) (somber guitar music) - [Voiceover] For four days at the end of summer, folks remind visitors of how we used to live.

It started just as it had for years, a bunch of guys getting together to thresh grain, throwing wheat bundles off the wagon into the threshing machine.

On the other end, wheat going into a wagon, the separated straw blowing onto a pile.

All being powered by a big, steam traction engine that had been in the family for years.

It started in Rollag, Minnesota in 1954, because that year, the threshers noticed they had some visitors, onlookers, interested spectators.

And it has grown every year since.

So now, the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion attracts 80,000 people on Labor Day weekend, folks who want to see historical machines that work like they did in the building of America.

(train engine putting) (train horn blowing) (train whistling) To a person, the members of the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion confess to having been infected by the steam bug.

I'm sure it has to do with the whistles.

- And it's got the coolest-sounding whistle on earth.

- [Voiceover] But for others, it's the massive engines and boilers that require close attention.

- Will you turn the injector on?

(hissing air) We usually like to keep it about 3/4, and that way you know there's enough water in the boiler that won't get too hot & have problems.

- [Voiceover] Have problems.

It's respect for those potential problems, and respect for the precision the designers and engineers used to build these things.

- You think about the castings that they had to do on this when they had to draw 'em out on drafting paper, and you know do it all by hand with slide rules, and get tolerances down to hundredths of thousandths of an inch.

You know, like that flywheel, if that isn't perfectly balanced, and everything, the whole thing will shake, and destroy your bearings and everything.

And so things have to be just very, very precise with this.

- [Voiceover] Darren Gunderson has been an engineer since 2005.

During the rest of the year he's in information technologies guy, a computer geek for a school district.

But on Labor Day, and other weekends, he's overcome with the marvel of steam power, working steam power.

- This is probably one of the premier shows for really working engines, you know, not just static displays that we have, things out, doing things, between sawmills and threshing and you know all the demonstrations and things that, we're really puttin' the engines to work the way that they should be.

And not just having them be museum pieces.

- [Voiceover] That's the goal of the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion, to display working machines.

And at this show, there were an estimated 60 working steam traction engines, and 500 working antique gas tractors.

And to prove they work, they all showed up in the parades, twice a day.

- [Voiceover] And coming up now are the older traction engine, meaning, to drive itself, on the show route this is a 1899 return-flue Minneapolis engine.

- [Voiceover] Yep, 1899.

They're old.

Though some of them may have looked new.

That's what a good restoration does.

And some of 'em, like that Harris combine, designed to lean so the grain growin' on side hills could be harvested on a level screen.

They may have worked well, but they looked positively unusual, even to folks used to seeing farm equipment.

And these folks are used to seeing farm equipment.

They're rural people, mostly, and while other parades might cause exclamations of awe, folks watching these parades appear to be studying things that just aren't around anymore, except for here.

(train engine putting) They plow, with 10-bottom plows and larger.

Maybe not the straightest rows, but folks get a look at what plowing was like with a steam engine.

And over the years, they've added other examples of how folks used steam power.

A steam roller, powering sawmills, lifting logs, pulling trains, powering electrical generators, stamping souvenir plates, turning a carousel, and it all started with using a steam engine to thresh grain.

- My grandfather was collecting steam engines when it wasn't fashionable, when they should have been in World War II when they were scrapping things, and he had the foresight to see that no, we don't want to get rid of all this.

This is our history.

How do we learn, well we learn from history.

And so it's just been a way of our life.

- [Voiceover] Eric Nelson's dad and grandfather are two of the founders of the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion.

His family shared a way of life and an interest in history with the nine men who started it all.

- Well, as it turns out, I am the last living charter member of the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion.

- [Voiceover] If we hear pride in that statement, that's okay with John Cogswell.

He feels pride, and a little regret that the rest have gone on.

But pride, that they started what's become a living history park, if you will, a park where antiques still run, and work the way they were designed to.

Cogswell was among the crew that found the Villaime engine, named for the St. Paul box and lumber Company that had used it since before the turn of the 20th century.

- We were very surprised that what we saw was this engine.

And it was so beautifully preserved for the age, clearly a real classic design for the 1880s, 1890s.

That was just very rare.

We made our proposal, and he said, "You're just in time, because this was "scheduled to be demolished," because there was a big housing development was gonna go in on the whole property and the whole thing was gonna be destroyed.

So he said, "If you can get it out this fall, "we'll donate it to you for nothing."

- [Voiceover] John Cogswell helped move the Villaime engine and installed it at the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion site in Rollag in 1972.

He says he helped find the steam locomotive number 353, and the steam forging hammer, all working machines.

- It provides a living history of our heritage, in not only agricultural, you know in agriculture, but also in industry.

And I think it's important to know and understand where we come from.

- [Voiceover] That belief is uppermost in the minds of nearly every member of the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion.

They know in their bones that folks need to see machines that our grandfathers, and in some cases, great-great-great grandfathers used.

Not replicas, not sitting there doing nothing, but actual machines fired up and moving, working, especially in the parades.

- This past week, they've been coming back from all over the country, and then, "Oh man, there's my old buddy from Washington," or, "There's the one from Indiana," you know, and they come back year after year, take their vacation, and spend it here, you know.

And so it truly is a reunion.

That's definitely.

(train whistles) So the people that started it, why they had the right idea, you know, and everybody that's been here a while realizes, "Yeah, it is a reunion," yep.

- [Voiceover] Yep, it's a reunion.

The Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion is most certainly what lots of folks would call an antique power show, and it is most certainly a history show, with a long history of its own.

But it is, indeed, most certainly a reunion, a big, family get-together that happens every Labor Day weekend.

The folks who put on the show know it, live it, and do their best to help folks understand their extended family.

- The best part of this whole thing for me, and I think my family, too, is the community of people around it.

There's a lot of good people.

And opportunities are kind of rare, it seems these days for a bunch of good people actually doing work together as a community.

I think that's the best part of it.

So the work is good, and I enjoy working on the steam engine, but sitting around having a cup of coffee, shooting the breeze as we're getting ready in the morning, that's probably the most enjoyable part of it.

Machinery is great, but the people are better.

- [Voiceover] The community of people at the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion includes births, deaths, marriages, yep, one or two a year of folks who meet here and fall in love and want to spend the rest of their lives together.

And divorces.

It is people who join the community for the technology, or the history, and not infrequently, find themselves surprised by the culture in which they have immersed themselves.

It's people who get involved for the history or the technology, and find themselves part of a big family, that every year, has a big reunion on a hill in Rollag, Minnesota.

- Now let's take a tour of the End-O-Line Railroad Park and Museum, a nostalgic treasure that resides in the small town of Currie.

(gentle guitar music) - People recognize the name Currie because of the park, and because of the lakes area here, where a lot people come to stay during the summertime.

And it gives them a place also, as the small towns around here decline, it is a place where memories can be held and kept.

Where they don't fade away and disappear.

There's a place where they can actually come.

It started in 1972, a couple of girls with the 4H Club, Poco-a-Poco, decided that they would do a community pride project and clean up the turntable that had gone into disrepair, and from there on, it springboarded into, the depot across the road became available, and so they wrote the railroad and ended up purchasing it for $1.00.

However, the expense was moving it, and moving it across the street, and so, eventually, they got the county involved, because of the expense as the park continued to grow.

Slowly built up funds and purchased a little bit, added this little bit, people donated, and it's kind of come to be what it has over the last, almost 40 years now.

I just think that they'll be surprised at the vast amount of things we have here.

It's around 15 acres, the park and museum itself.

The two things that we make sure people leave here with are, number one, a ride on the turntable, and secondly, that they get to see the operation of the model train along with its sound effects.

(train horn blowing) - [Voiceover] Aboooaaard!

(bell ringing) (train horn blowing) (steam engine running) - It's a scale model of Currie, which is pretty cool.

So you can see what it would have actually looked like back then.

I think this part of the museum is important for younger kids.

They get a big kick out of the model train, that's for sure.

They like to hear it make sounds and light up.

Sometimes it scares them, but.

(laughs) And I think it gives them kind of a visual, to see, okay, this is what it actually looked like.

It kind of puts into perspective what Currie looked like back then.

(bell ringing) - This is one of the two cabooses we have, which you notice are disappearing quickly from the tracks, but from the 1940s era, this is a Grand Western, and one of the styles that has the actual cupola, where the break man would sit, and one on each side to look down the tracks to watch for any fires, anything on the tracks, things like that.

In the front, these look like they'd be great bunk beds up here, to sleep in, that's what the kids love, but actually, you were to sleep down here you'd be seat belted in.

If you were to fall asleep on watch up there, and get caught, you would be fired by the railroad.

Also, in the front is a bathroom, and the railroads all had the rule that bathrooms must be locked one mile before and one mile, until one mile out of town.

For obvious reasons, the waste products dropped straight to the ground, and we didn't, the railroad didn't want bad PR with any of the towns that it ran through.

We are in the old Currie Depot, which is unique in the aspect that it had two sides, a mens side and a women's side.

We are now standing in the women's side of the depot.

Women and children didn't have to stay on this side of the depot, but they could stay with their family or their husband if they wanted to, on the other side, but this side just tended to be a little bit tamer.

I think that they were treated a little differently than the men, even by the railroad.

You can tell we have the heater.

Although this is not native to this depot, it's fancier, however it did come from the Worthington Depot.

But you can tell it's put on the women's side to make things a little more aesthetically pleasing.

One of the neat things that we do have that wasn't used here at the End-O-Line, because we were the end of the line, were the message poles.

The first type was, you just caught it with your arm, and the hoop slid through, and then you'd take the note off and then throw it alongside and mid-voyage you don't have to go pick it up.

The other one was a string that was attached, and you would catch that with your arm and the stick would be kept by the agent, and the string with the message would be hauled onto the train.

Welcome to the engine house.

This was where the trains that came in and needed repairs would be brought, and of course now, it is a large part of our museum.

One of our prides and joy of the museum is our 1875 steam engine that was built in Philadelphia.

However, you notice that the wheels are closer, which means it is a narrow-gauge train, and that's because it was built to be sent down to South America in which it was, and eventually made its way back to the United States here, in 1969, and in 1982 it came to the End Of the Line, and along with its coal tender.

This room, when I go through a tour, it tends to be one of the favorite places for the elderly, along with many parts of our park, that stir up old memories.

For example, in the back, we have an old buggy that can be converted to a sleigh that would be pulled by horses.

Brings back a lot of memories for a lot of people.

And just seeing some of the old, the cream cans that were brought in to the station, the old-time trunks, things like that.

And it just stirs a lot of memories for people.

One of my favorite exhibits that I hope to expand on is our hobo exhibit, as we call it, although it was more than just the hobos, it was a culture all its own that had social classes, basically with the hobos at the top, followed by the bums, and on the bottom were the more criminal elements, the tramps.

But they had their own culture, their way of communicating, their way of leaving messages for one another, their carvings in places near the rail yards, in the rail yards, where to stop, where not to stop, things like that.

It's a whole unique aspect of the railroad that we don't think of much anymore today.

My favorite part of the museum has got to be the General Store, just because there are so many unique and interesting things, and a merchant at that time was kind of a jack-of-all-trades, and was really everything from postmaster, as in the case was here, to doctor, to farm expert to you name it.

It was very important, because a lot of these little towns, a general store was one of the first places you needed, because that's where you would, when you were starting out, come to get everything, including seed corn, or wheat, whatever it was that you needed for your farming needs as well, not just your household needs.

This is the first schoolhouse that was built in Murray County.

It's called the Sunrise School District Number One.

Many of the items in here are original, and I especially like the tin ceilings and walls.

It was the 1870s, and it's been moved approximately six miles from its original site to this spot, and many of the things are original, including the 1875 piano, some of the desks, and many of the other items that you find in the display case.

One of my favorite stories that has been told numerous times by students that actually went to school here was that the paste, which the teacher made at the beginning of the week, and there were special paste jars for your school projects, and they almost to a tee, all told me that by Friday, the paste tasted very good.

(chuckles) We're at now the Section Foreman House, and this is where the section foreman and his family would live, and he was in charge of all the men that worked on the rail line, keeping the tracks up and running.

Some of the interesting pieces that we have is a fainting couch, which is always a fun story, talking about the time when corsets were in fashion, and the girls squeezed their stomachs in so tightly that sometimes they passed out.

We have many different things, or items that would have been very typical in a moderate-income home at the turn of the century.

Another real neat thing that we have here, and it again, shows the community pride, is we have a veterans memorial where people can purchase a stone block to be put on the memorial and their loved one's name, whether that person is deceased or alive, but in any war, or was just a participant in the military.

And they are honored with this memorial.

And that's a project that was started by the American Legion.

One thing about trains seems to fascinate most people, and really, I think it's different for each individual.

There's just something almost freeing, I guess, you can relate back to the hobos about what it must have been like to just hop on a train and ride.

And whether it was illegally, and not knowing where you're gonna end up, or whether it was legally, by buying a ticket and knowing your destination.

For the time period that it took place in, it was something you didn't get to do every day was ride a train, and I think that fascination still holds true for young and old.

- Well, that's all for this week.

For more information go to our website.

See you again next time on Postcards.

- [Voiceover] This program on Pioneer Public Television is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

Additional support provided by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a non-profit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom in Southwestern Minnesota.

shalomhillfarm.org.

The Arrowwood Resort and Conference Center, your ideal choice for Minnesota resorts, offering luxury town homes, 18 holes of golf, Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash Waterpark and much more.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a relaxing vacation, or great location for an event.

ExploreAlex.com.

Easy to get to, hard to leave.

(gentle orchestral music)