WISCONSIN DELLS — When Milwaukee County purchased land for a new zoo in the late 1950s, its first project wasn’t a primate house, elephant enclosure or the installation of machines to create wax molds of animals.
Instead, it was the laying of small-gauge railroad tracks to run trains so that visitors could get an up-close view on the progress of the 190-acre zoo’s construction.
When the zoo opened in 1961, the trains continued to be a draw, especially those fueled with coal, propelled by steam — exact replicas of their larger counterparts that pulled passengers and freight across the country decades before.
Only the days of steam at the Milwaukee County Zoo are numbered. Diesel is taking over, and by this fall the last steam engine will depart the Safari Train Station and make a final run past the African Waterhole, Otter Passage and Lake Evinrude.
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But the trio of former zoo steam locomotives will not sit idle, their boilers empty, fireboxes empty of coal. That’s because a team of volunteers at the Riverside & Great Northern Railway are addicted to steam. Mostly retired, they are determined to keep the locomotives in service on a 1.5-mile track through woods along exposed rock bluffs and over a gorge in Sauk County, about a mile north of Pirate’s Cove Adventure Golf, but secluded from the tourism bustle that consumes Wisconsin Dells.
“You hear the heartbeat and it’s hissing. Steam is leaking out from all sorts of things,” said Tom Fleming, a member of the Riverside & Great Northern Preservation Society. “You get this smell going and the sound, the whistle sets off at a particular pitch. It just hits all of your senses. It’s alive.”
Going home
This is also a homecoming. The locomotives were born here at the now-defunct Sandley Light Railway Equipment Works, which for more than 30 years built locomotives for the Milwaukee County Zoo and other zoos and attractions around the country.
The Riverside & Great Northern Railway has owned the No. 82 steam engine from the zoo for over three decades and earlier this month received the No. 1916, which went into service at the zoo in 1961. The No. 1924 steam engine, built in 1979, the last one built by the Sandleys, will make limited runs at the zoo this year before it’s put on a flat bed truck to join its two sister engines here in the Dells.
The acquisitions of the two steam engines this year is part of a more than $1 million gift from Bill Gardener, who owned the Wisconsin & Southern Railroad from 1988 to 2011. His donation has also funded significant upgrades to the locomotive shop where repairs to engines and coaches are made, and there are plans to expand the parking lot, build a new pavilion with bathrooms and construct a gift shop.
“I know a lot of the people that are here. They’re former employees and friends, and I wanted to get myself involved with something. I was here probably 30 years ago and I saw the direction it was going and I decided to be a main contributor to take it to another level,” Gardner said.
“They finally came home,” Gardner said of the locomotives. “This is where they were built, and this is where they’re going to stay now. We’ll take very good care of them for many, many years so the younger generation can enjoy and learn about steam.”
Old-school attraction
The Riverside & Great Northern Railway is a quaint throwback and stands in contrast to this region’s sprawling waterpark resorts, the jet boat rides on the Wisconsin River, go-kart tracks, spas and roller coasters. The railway, with its own depot, wooden water tower, locomotive house, three turntables and several other buildings that hold coaches, locomotives and workshops, is more in tune with other classic attractions like the Original Wisconsin Ducks, H.H. Bennett’s photo studio, Wisconsin Deer Park, a boat tour of the Upper Dells and a walk through the Witches Gulch canyon.
Thankfully, the railway hasn’t gone the way of Storybook Gardens, Fort Dells, the Enchanted Forest & Prehistoric Land and the Tommy Bartlett Show.
Somewhere between a full-size railroad and those found on a basement table, the railway will open May 4 for weekend rides and then be open daily from Memorial Day through Labor Day. A train departs the station at the top of each hour from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“The cool thing about this, compared to a full-size locomotive, is that it’s right there where people can see it. You’re not looking up, they’re all right here in front of you,” said Bob Welke, president of the railway’s preservation society. “As I tell people, there’s absolutely nothing different between our train and a full-size train. Everything that’s on a big engine is on that engine. It’s just smaller.”
Restoring history
The railway was established by Elmer Sandley and his son, Norman, in 1949, when they began laying two miles of 15-guage track along the Rock River in Janesville in an effort to to run the locomotives and coaches they had built over the previous two years. But NIMBYism was a thing even back then, and the city in 1952 declined to renew the lease for the railway after neighbors complained. So the Sandleys moved the railway to an old railroad bed northwest of downtown Wisconsin Dells that in 1896 was abandoned by the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad.
The first train from the R&GNR hit the rails in August 1953, and the railway became one of the early post-World War II tourist attractions in the area as the Sandley Light Railway Equipment Works established a new base to build locomotives and coaches. But when the equipment works’ bankruptcy and closure in 1981 appeared to mark the end for the railway. But the trains would return in 1990 after the creation of the preservation society in 1988 and two years of restoration work on the tracks.
“It was in tough shape,” Welke said. “I never thought we would see a train on it again. It was quite a project.”
Welke, 67, has been coming to the railway since he was a child in the 1960s. In the late 1970s he began working as a relief engineer on weekends and worked for Gardner at Wisconsin & Southern Railroad for 20 years. He is also a charter member of the preservation society and was on hand April 5 when the No. 1916 locomotive arrived from the zoo.
“I am more than looking forward to being able to run it down the railroad with my son and my grandson and see it come back to life again,” Welke said. “It means a lot to me. It means a lot to my family.”
‘All real, just like its full-size cousins’
Few people have more intimate knowledge of the No. 1916 than Ken Ristow, who 25 years ago was hired as the first full-time engineer at the Milwaukee County Zoo. He has spent years not only driving the zoo train but maintaining the locomotive, which on some days would put in 25 miles on the tracks that wind though the zoo.
The 6-ton locomotive, which got a new boiler in 2007, can hold up to 180 gallons of water and its tender 750 pounds of coal. It took about 15 to 20 pounds of coal for a lap around the zoo but will likely use a little more at its new home in the Dells, since the route is slightly longer at 3.25 miles.
“Even though it’s small, it’s a significant piece of equipment,” Ristow said, just prior to the locomotive’s first test run on April 6 in the Dells. “The sounds are real, the smells are real, the fuel is real, the oil and grease, all real, just like its full-size cousins.”
Ristow became fascinated with trains at a young age and went to work shoveling coal at the Mid-Continent Railway Museum in North Freedom before becoming a licensed locomotive engineer on typically run full-size, non-steam trains. But when a position came up at the zoo, he jumped at the chance and over the years has volunteered at the Riverside & Great Northern Railway. Ristow looked perfectly at home earlier this month when he wedged himself into the cab in front of a series of gauges and a small firebox and engineered the locomotive that pulled two coaches, each capable of holding six adults or 12 children.
After departing the station, Ristow laid on the whistle as the train approached the woods, steam filling the air and black smoke belching from the stack.
“Once you get these things in your blood, it’s kind of hard to get them out,” Ristow said. “It’s a hobby we enjoy. It’s long work, it’s dirty work but we love it. It’s a labor of love.”
Barry Adams covers regional news for the Wisconsin State Journal. Send him ideas for On Wisconsin at 608-252-6148 or by email at badams@madison.com.