(The following story by Jane Carlson appeared on The Register-Mail website on September 9. Bill Franckey is a member of BLET Division 644 in Galesburg, Ill.)
GALESBURG, Ill. — As many people in Galesburg speculate what new structures might be built as part of the latest wave of development on the outskirts of town, Bill Franckey is making sure we don’t forget what’s already been torn down.
Franckey, a locomotive engineer for BNSF and a fourth-generation railroader, started researching CB and Q depots about 25 years ago, collecting bits of information from newspaper articles, first-person accounts and other sources.
Through that research, he became supremely interested in Galesburg’s first depot, a two-story red wooden building with four chimneys and 11 dormers that predated the large brick depot that opened in 1884.
Called Berrien Depot, the building was a hub of activity in the years after the railroad came to Galesburg in 1854, amid the roundhouse, back shops and switching yard at Five Points, the area of intersecting streets just east of Knox College at the current site of Carver Center.
Berrien Depot had its brushes with fame, with Stephen Douglas getting off the train there before debating Abraham Lincoln at Knox College in 1858, and Lincoln himself reportedly hanging out there as well.
Notorious for other reasons, too, the area around the depot was thick with pickpockets, saloons and a billiards hall.
Once thought to have burned down in the 19th century, Berrien Depot remained standing long after the magnificent new brick depot was built, but the action and activity that surrounded it quickly faded once the new depot opened.
“Five Points just disappeared,” Franckey said.
With his interest piqued by Galesburg’s forgotten first depot, Franckey set out on a mission to research and re-create the original depot and its surroundings.
He tracked down maps at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield and at a retired switchman’s house in Knoxville that provided more information and revealed the freighthouse was separate from the depot in the original set-up.
He spent countless hours at the Galesburg Public Library, poring over two months’ worth of newspapers on microfilm a day in search of more information about the set-up at Five Points – from what the depot itself looked like to what buildings surrounded it.
And he and his business partner in a venture called Prairie Films, fellow railroader Gary Granberg, wrote and produced a documentary film about the history of railroading in Galesburg called “Galesburg, Capital of the Burlington Railroad,” in which they told the story of Galesburg’s forgotten depot, as well as many other tales of the industry and its significance here.
The pair, with the assistance of historians and model railroader friends, also began building a 6-by-9-foot scale model of the original depot and its surroundings, based on the information they gathered.
But even with a vast and growing body of knowledge about Berrien Depot and early railroad operations in Galesburg, something was missing.
To Franckey’s dismay, there were no clear photographs of Berrien Depot, only a small lithograph taken from an 1861 Knox County map and an 1870 photograph in which the outline of the depot’s roof can be seen between two locomotives. In an 1871 lithograph of the new roundhouse and shops, the depot was just out of frame.
For such an important piece of Galesburg’s history to be such a visual mystery sent Franckey on a quest to find images of Berrien Depot. That quest went on for years.
“I knew there had to be a photograph some place,” he said. “The depot just disappeared on us.”
A couple months ago, Franckey found in the Knox College archives a faded 1866 photograph of the south end of downtown, with Beecher Chapel and Whiting Hall in clear sight, but the buildings in the background hazy and undefined.
With the help of Knox archivist Carley Robison, Franckey got an extremely high-resolution scan of the photograph, then pulled the digitally enhanced version of the image up on his computer.
There, floating across his screen as he moved around the image – was Berrien Depot and its surroundings, in the clearest depiction of the area discovered to date.
The image provided the additional information and perspective for Franckey and his cohorts to complete the scale model, for which they are now seeking a permanent home.
For Franckey, an avid collector of railroad facts and lore, piecing together the stories of the railroad in Galesburg is akin to telling the story of Galesburg itself.
He and Granberg are working on another documentary film called “Open Tonite” – after the sign that hung outside the long-defunct Kiddieland on Henderson Street.
In that film, which they hope to release by the end of the year, they take viewers inside the landmarks and buildings that now are physically gone, but are at the heart of the city’s heritage.
Just like Franckey’s quest to illustrate the story of Galesburg’s forgotten depot, the film is an example of his passion for chronicling what we’ve lost as a way of remembering who we are.
A Home for Berrien Depot
Do you know of a place that could be a permanent home for a 6-by-9-foot scale model of Galesburg’s original depot and its surroundings?
Contact Bill Franckey of Prairie Films at prairiefilms@rio-express.net .