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Riding the Rails in Fremont   How the Fremont Dinner Train and the Fremont & Elkhorn Valley Railroad are bringing 1940s-style rail travel back to life. Story by David Bristow Photography by Bobbi and Steve Olson

Click on the above image for a slide show of images by Bobbi and Steve Olson

Inside the engine house, the old locomotive roared to life with a 1,200 horsepower growl. The building’s big front door was open, allowing the diesel exhaust to escape. The rails led out into small switch yard filled with 1940s passenger and dining cars.

Nebraska is home to some big railroad facilities. North America’s largest railroad, Union Pacific, is headquartered in Omaha. UP operates the world’s largest switching yard in North Platte. America’s second-largest railroad, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, employs 1,800 workers at a sprawling facility in Alliance.

But that 1951 locomotive isn’t based in any of those places. It is kept at the edge of a residential neighborhood in Fremont, and belongs to Nebraska’s smallest railroad, the Fremont and Elkhorn Valley. The name is abbreviated FEVR and pronounced “fever.”

FEVR’s size isn’t the only thing that makes it unique. It’s also the only railroad in the state operated by volunteers. It isn’t a model in somebody’s basement and it doesn’t pull kiddie cars in a park. It’s the real thing – 17 miles of track between Fremont and Hooper, a locomotive rescued from the scrap line, and cars that have been obsolete since passenger rail travel all but died off a generation ago.

Volunteers operate the locomotive and keep the cars in working order. They repair tracks and maintain railroad crossings. They run excursion trains for paying customers and provide power for the Fremont Dinner Train, a local business with its own vintage dining cars.

FEVR began in October 1984 when “a few of us guys sat down in a body shop and talked about what we wanted to do,” said volunteer Mark Kothenbeutel. They knew that the Chicago & North Western was abandoning the local track. They wanted to keep trains running, and figured a scenic railroad and dinner train would be the way to do it.

After applying for grants and soliciting donations, the group bought the track from Fremont to West Point. They hoped to go as far as Norfolk, but eventually even West Point was too far. Excursion trains began running in 1986 between Fremont and Hooper.

While passengers socialize aboard the Fremont Dinner Train, costumed actors go from table to table, revealing clues about the murder mystery each table is trying to solve.

It was a good time to start. “During the ’80s the railroads were unloading a lot of locomotives,” Kothenbeutel said. FEVR bought three off the “scrap line” for about $10,000 each. None were in working condition. One was disassembled for parts, another never did work, and a third is in use today. It is a “switch engine,” a smallish locomotive intended for use in a switch yard or for short runs around town.

By comparison to the 1,200 horsepower switch engine, the locomotives we saw recently at the BNSF facility in Alliance are capable of 4,000 horsepower or more – but then, they’re pulling mile-long trains of coal cars at highway speeds. A FEVR train consists of several passenger cars at 15 mph. The dinner train is even slower. Historic railroading isn’t about getting anywhere; it’s about enjoying the ride.

Though the group includes retired railmen, not everyone has a professional railroad background when they join. Most are railroad buffs who find that the Lionel train set in the basement just isn’t enough. Kothenbeutel said that FEVR helped him get into railroading full time. He’s worked for several short line railroads in several states, but these days he’s back home in Fremont. “I do just about everything,” he said of his volunteer work. “I’m car attendant, repair cars, engineer and conductor, go out and do track work. We all do things like that.”

Just before the locomotive was started up, Kothenbeutel showed me around the engine house. Again, the contrast to BNSF was striking. Touring the Alliance facility involved walking through enormous buildings with high-tech equipment, dozens of locomotives and countless cars. The FEVR facility looked like a larger version of your dad’s garage – tools everywhere, and nothing was new.

Even the scale of the tools was different. Nuts and bolts seemed oversized. Some of the wrenches were four feet long. Elsewhere, railroad crossing lights were piled on a shelf, and a bent crossing guard rail – struck by a careless driver – lay in a corner.

But the oldest equipment was in the adjacent Nebraska Railroad Museum. Kothenbeutel pointed out an old link-and-pin coupling in a display case. Until the latter 19th century, this is how cars were linked together. A metal ring that looked like a link to a large chain was held in place by a metal rod called a pin. When cars were joined, a brakeman had to drop the pin into the slot at just the right moment and get his fingers out of the way.

“Many a brakeman or switchman was missing fingers,” Kothenbeutel said. “You could tell how experienced a railroader was by how many fingers he had.”
When the link-and-pin couplers were replaced by automatic couplers, the new technology created a cliché we still use. When the “knuckles” of the couplers came together, the pin would drop automatically into place with an audible click. If it was done gently enough, you might say it was “so quiet you could hear a pin drop.”

Not many industries attract a fan base of non-professionals. People who describe themselves as “railfans” enjoy trains for their own sake and obsess over arcane railroading history. Model train sets probably have something to do with it, as does the colorful history of railroading in this country. Mostly, railfans can’t tell you why – they just love trains, and think it strange if you don’t love trains too.

Oddly enough, Shirley Angermund wasn’t a railfan when she started volunteering for FEVR and the Nebraska Railroad Museum. A friend was involved and said they needed a secretary to take minutes at their meetings. Eight years later, Shirley is the group’s president.

“I’ve gotten more enthusiastic about it the longer I’m here,” she said. “The kids are the ones I get the most enjoyment out of. Most children nowadays haven’t had the opportunity to experience that kind of travel. The other thing is the faces of the older people – that was their only means of long-distance travel. During the war years they remember being on troop trains. They come to ride the train and they tell you their stories.”

There’s something to be said for rail travel. Aboard a 1940s passenger car, the seats were roomier and the legroom greater than you’ll find on a commercial jet. As for amenities, FEVR trains include a 1938 Railroad Post Office car now used for concessions. Some of the cars are climate-controlled.

Like all volunteer organizations, FEVR needs more volunteers. A core group of fewer than 20 people does most of the work, and some of the original members are getting up in years and can’t do as much as they used to. They’re hoping to draw more retired railroad workers as well as railfans of all ages.

Josh Kay is a good example. The 18-year-old from Elkhorn arrived at the railyard in heavy overalls and steel-toed boots, carrying a scoop shovel on his shoulder. He was the conductor.

“I’m in charge of all those cars, the main functions of them,” he said. “As conductor, you’ve got to check all the fluid levels. You’ve got to make sure all the brakes are working. I go around checking the train for defects, and I can say if we can go out or not. It’s a dirty job.”

Not that he was complaining.

“He’s been interested in trains since he could walk,” said Kay’s mother, Susan, who was waiting to board the locomotive. She had been invited to ride along with Josh and engineer Dennis Wallen as they went out to clear snow drifts in preparation for a late-winter dinner train run. She said that although Josh is an athlete (he played tennis and golf in high school), his bedroom walls have long been covered not with sports posters, but with prints of trains.

If the position of conductor seems like a lot of responsibility for someone not yet out of high school, consider that Kay had to earn his position. He’s been volunteering at FEVR for the past year. He’s gone on 72 runs, studied standard training materials, passed written tests and worked under the supervision of FEVR’s experienced railmen. As with Mark Kothenbeutel, Kay’s passion for trains is leading to a career. This fall, he’ll attend the National Academy of Railroad Science in Overland Park, Kan.

The old locomotive pulled slowly out of the engine house and stopped in the yard. Kay and his mother climbed aboard, and soon they all disappeared around a bend.

Adam Griger waves to motorists as the Fremont Dinner Train crosses Highway 77 on its way out of Fremont.

That evening, the train had not yet crossed the city limits when dining car passengers learned of the murder of actress Jean Harlette. The Hollywood star had been in town for the filming of a movie – and now, director Cecil B. DeMilo didn’t know what he was going to do. Meanwhile, co-star Carla Devine seemed suspiciously unconcerned.

The whole campy scenario was being played out aboard the Murder Mystery car of the Fremont Dinner Train. As dinner was served and the lights of Fremont receded in the distance, five costumed actors went from table to table, chatting with guests as though it was 1943 and a famous actress had just been found dead in her hotel room. All five were under suspicion, and it was up to passengers to piece together clues to determine the murderer’s identity by the end of the journey. In addition, three passengers were given hats, nametags and back stories – and became suspects themselves.

The murder mysteries have been going almost as long as the dinner train itself – which is in its 19th year. “As far as I know, we put the first murder mysteries on trains in the country,” said Bruce Eveland as we chatted in a combination dining/lounge car before departure that evening. Eveland is manager and part-owner of the dinner train.

The reason for the innovation was simple. “We about starved that first winter,” he said. “So I came up with the idea of putting together an Agatha Christie-type play, because she used trains so much. It took off like a rocket ship and we haven’t looked back since.” Today, besides the murder mysteries, the train offers melodramas, World War II USO-style shows and other special events, plus cars with dining only.

Eveland was friendly, but admittedly nervous that evening. In addition to the murder mystery, a wedding with nearly 80 guests was about to start in the front three cars. Though he and his crew had attended to every detail, he wanted everything to be perfect. As we talked, he tested the video camera he would soon use in one car to broadcast the ceremony via closed-circuit television to the other two cars full of wedding guests. Nearby, the tuxedoed groom and his groomsmen stopped at the bar for a drink before the ceremony.

Soon, the locomotive came around to couple to the lead car. Eveland said he hoped the engineer understood that there was a wedding cake aboard. He needn’t have worried. The connection was so gentle that the car barely moved. I was aboard at the time and can’t verify it, but it was probably done so quietly you could hear a pin drop.

“I’m guilty of being a train aficionado,” Eveland said. “Always have been.” After years of running his family’s sod business, he decided he “didn’t want to spend the rest of my life on a tractor.” When the opportunity arose to start a dinner train, he moved quickly. He found investors, bought his first dining cars and began renovating them for use. The Fontanelle Springs car, where we sat, still bears the maple-leaf logo of the Canadian National Railway and has signage in both French and English. Not counting the Fontanelle Springs, the four dining cars comfortably seat 168 guests. The crew consists of Eveland’s servers and bartenders, plus caterers, actors, and the FEVR engineer and conductor.

“You have to plan for every situation,” said Bruce’s daughter Aly Eveland. She has tended bar aboard the dinner train for the past five years. “You can’t be out of anything. It’s not like a restaurant where you can run next door to the store.”

The most unexpected situation, Aly said, was the time when a woman went into labor on the train. The crew arranged for ambulance to meet them at a country road crossing. The engineer stopped the train, and the woman was taken to the hospital in time for the delivery.

“There is nothing dull about this job ever,” Aly said.

Melissa Petersen serves passengers aboard the dinner train. The 1940s dining cars still bear the markings of the Canadian National Railroad.

By the end of the evening, three tables had solved the murder, but mine was not one of them. We had ignored some pretty obvious evidence – at least it seemed obvious once we learned the solution.

But it really didn’t matter. Everyone had had a good time whether or not they’d correctly deciphered the clues. For passengers and crew, the secret of the dinner train experience is the train itself.

“You have a very fun clientele on the train,” Eveland said. “People have high expectations, but it’s a bit of a lark – they’re here to have fun.” In Nebraska, the only other place to have such an experience is on the NRI Dining Car in Chadron (featured in our May/June 2005 issue).

What a lot of old-timers already know, and what passengers of all ages are finding out, is that “traveling on a train is very relaxing,” Eveland said. There’s no back door, no way to leave while the train is moving, so there’s no reason to be in hurry. The car rocks ever so slightly as it rumbles slowly along the tracks, and the motion has a hypnotic effect. “Once in a while we get somebody who’s a little wound up,” he said. “It doesn’t take too long until they’re relaxed.”