Dave's Depots -- In the Heat of the Night Edition -- Sparta, Illinois

This edition of Dave’s Depots takes us to Sparta, Illinois. Sparta is a town in Randolph County, Illinois. The depot sits along the old Gulf Mobile and Ohio line south from St. Louis. The line active through Sparta, no longer as a mainline, but as a branch to a coal power plant north of town on the Kaskaskia River. The line north of the power plant to St. Louis is abandoned, and part of the right of way was reused as a new path for Illinois Route 3.

Many of you may recognize the Sparta depot, and the entire town, as the setting for the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night. The movie starred Rod Steiger, Sidney Poitier, and Lee Grant. Sparta became “Sparta, Mississippi” for the movie, and many local buildings were used. The movie is actually a pretty good one, winning four Academy Awards that year. The Sparta depot is featured in several scenes. In the opening, Poitier disembarks the train in Sparta, to await a connection. At the end of the movie, Poitier boards the train again to leave town.

The movie also featured trains of the Missouri Pacific. Early in the movie, an escaped convict is running from the police and the requisite hound dogs, when he crosses the MoPac tracks near the Mississippi River and then attempts to flee to "Arkansas" over the river on a highway bridge. This part was filmed in nearby Chester, Illinois. You can still drive across the bridge today.

Ironically enough, in the movie, Poitier is supposed to be heading back north when he boards the train at the end of the movie. In real life, he’s heading south.

Today, the depot is in good shape, used as a local art gallery.

277 Update

I started by putting primer on the rest of the surfaces of the lobster trap, as seen here. After about four hours, it was dry to the touch.

Meanwhile, I did some more painting in the interior. The parts of the duct I had scraped down earlier were rolled with a first finish coat, as seen here. And more of the smoker bulkhead was painted. I also did more sorting and cleaning inside the car.

Finally, Gerry Detloff helped me raise the lobster trap onto the roof. It's hard to take a good picture inside the barn, at least from the ground. I'll need the right size ladder to install the rest of the screws holding it to the roof.

Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum

On Friday I was able to pay a brief visit to the...in North Judson, Ind. The museum was closed so I didn't get to see the C&O Berk or any of the other prides of the fleet stored inside, but here's a few pictures of what's available outside.

The depot looks very nice. Until one of us gets a chance to visit when the place is open, this is not a full treatment of the site.

This dispatcher's tower was recently moved to the property and is being restored. Spaulding used to look much like this.

On the left is the regular service caboose train. I'd have to say these IC Highliners look a little out of place.

And then there's South Shore cars 4 and 31, which have been scalped.

Finally, I suppose this is meant to be Thomas. It's a Porter 0-4-2T which went through several industrial owners before being saved. The museum's website has lots of information.

Building a Better Lobster Trap

The first thing to do today was to check up on the 308 and 309; everything looked fine. They operated both days over the weekend. On Saturday, I was the motorman with Greg Ceurvorst as conductor; after two trips it started to rain so the train had to be put away. Yesterday the cars operated for the Transport Extravaganza as seen here, with Jim Nauer and Dave Hammer.

Then it was on to the 277's interior. I sanded down some of the areas already painted and put on a first or second coat of white primer, including the sheet metal air conditioning duct seen at left.

Then I started to fix up the 277's lobster trap, as mentioned last time. This design is much easier to rebuild than the North Shore's. The longitudinal members are just steel plates, and the slats don't have much of a bend. On the North Shore all of these parts are wood and have to be steam-bent or cut to shape.

Three of the slats were missing parts, so they had to be removed, as seen here. I was able to re-use all of the machine screws that hold them in, however.

I scraped off all of the loose paint and rust and put brown primer on everything. This, of course, is the underside of the assembly. Next time I'll turn it over and paint the top side.





And here's a detail from an in-service photograph which shows what the trap will look like when it's installed. The next thing to install will be the ventilators along both sides of the roof.

And the Camp Grant is down to a pile of pieces, most of which are already in the dump trucks. Here we see a workman torching apart the underframe, and a pile of parts we're saving, such as a drawbar and the brake cylinder.

Soon the Camp Grant will be just another bad memory, like the mobile classrooms.

Illinois Terminal Fan Trip - 1963

Our friend Tom Cornillie found this advertisement for the Illini Railroad Club in a used book store in Oakland, Cal. The year is 1963. Tom points out that $19.95 was a lot of money in those days. When they got to Avon Yard in Indianapolis, they visited CA&E car 308 which was stored there at that time. Thanks, Tom!

The picture, of course, shows an earlier fan trip using only 233 and 234. I don't know the IT well enough to tell you where this is, but notice that the bracket arms are still in place over the track, so it wasn't long after electric service ended in 1956.

Update: Dale Jenkins says: "The train is between Bement and Monticello; southbound. That is Illinois Highway 105 in the foreground. This is the same site that had a large pyramid to mark a location of a famous Lincoln debate." Thanks!