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The Leviathan will pull the Lincoln funeral Train on April 22. Photo: Stone Gables Estate.

The Leviathan will pull the Lincoln funeral Train on April 22. Photo: Stone Gables Estate.

The Ironstone Ranch, aka Stone Gables Estate in Elizabethtown, isn’t afraid to do things big.

After all, it disassembled and then moved a giant, historic barn – The Star Barn – from Middletown to its property in West Donegal Township.

But what’s planned for the ranch next, is, as they say, taking it up a notch.

It is building a railroad.

“When you say you’re in, you’ve got to be all in,” David Abel, one of the owners of Ironstone Ranch, said at the time it moved the Star Barn in 2016.

On April 22, the ranch will honor Abraham Lincoln’s “funeral train,” which passed through Elizabethtown over 150 years ago.

The ranch plans to bring history to life by constructing a rail line on the original .62-mile rail bed that runs through Ironstone Ranch, where the train, containing the coffin of Lincoln, would have traveled in 1865.

On the tracks, the ranch will run a full-scale replica of a 4-4-0 steam locomotive, similar to the one that would have pulled the train 154 years ago.

 

The locomotive will pull a replica of Lincoln’s funeral car, the United States, and a replica 1850’s-style passenger car to haul troops, which will be portrayed by re-enactors.

But that’s only the beginning of what the ranch has in store.

Steve Torrico, who was hired by the ranch in May as general superintendent of the railroad, said plans are in the works to construct an entire railroad, roughly three miles in length, on the property, which totals 275 acres, in the next three years.

The railroad, which will operate for special events, weddings, corporates and maybe eventually the public, will include an 1860’s-style wooden trestle, a wooden turntable and a working wooden water tower.

The railroad is being designed and constructed by The Railroad Associates Corporation out of Camp Hill and will be named the Harrisburg, Lincoln & Lancaster.

The Locomotive

The Lincoln Funeral Train in Harrisburg on April 21. Photo: PA State Archives.

The Lincoln Funeral Train in Harrisburg on April 21. Photo: PA State Archives.

The replica locomotive, named The Leviathan, is not identical to the locomotive that pulled the Lincoln Funeral Train some 150 years ago, but its close.

The locomotive is actually a replica of one of the locomotives that was present at the golden spike ceremony to celebrate the opening of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. It will, however, be donned in the original colors the Lincoln locomotive would have been painted in 1865.

The Leviathan was built by David Kloke in 2009 and was sold to Stone Gables Estates in early 2018. It was built over a 10-year period in Chicago and traveled the country for the past nine years to various tourist railroads and museums.

Torrico had the opportunity to operate the locomotive when it came to the tourist railroad, where Torrico worked at the time in upstate New York in the fall of 2013. For two weeks, Torrico was the engineer of the train.

“I got to know it really well and Kloke liked the way I ran it,” Torrico remembers.

So, after the train left the railroad, Kloke asked Torrico to become his “traveling engineer” and operate the locomotive wherever it went.

Sometime later, Kloke met Abel at a train show and Abel asked Kloke about acquiring the United States funeral car, which Kloke also built, and bringing it to Elizabethtown.

Kloke told Abel that he would only consider letting him have the funeral car if he took the locomotive with it, Torrico remembers.

“And I came with the locomotive,” Torrico said with a laugh.

The Lincoln Funeral Train

On Friday, April 21, 1865, seven days after Lincoln was assassinated, his coffin was taken by honor guard to the train depot in Washington, D.C., en route to his hometown of Springfield, Illinois.

Over 10,000 people witnessed the train’s departure.

The train had nine cars and made one stop in Baltimore that morning, before heading to Harrisburg, where it arrived at 8:30 p.m. April 21.

The next morning, it departed the capital around 11:15 a.m., passing through Elizabethtown and present day Ironstone Ranch around noon, en route to Philadelphia.

At 4:50 p.m. April 22, it arrived in Philadelphia, and 11 days later to its final destination in Springfield, where Lincoln was laid to rest at Oak Ridge Cemetery.

The “Old Main” Line

The funeral train would have followed almost an entirely different route than the Amtrak, formerly the Pennsylvania Railroad, line follows in Elizabethtown today. In the 19th century, railroads were built along the path of least resistance and as inexpensively as possible. Safety and efficiency didn’t receive the consideration they do today.

In 1837, the commonwealth chartered the Harrisburg, Portsmouth, Mount Joy and Lancaster Railroad (HPMtJ&L), which followed the east side of the Susquehanna River and eventually made its way to Harrisburg through Elizabethtown.

To construct the railroad where the present day Amtrak line is constructed west of town was just not practical and would have required either a tunnel or a cut through the hillside.

And so, from Harrisburg, the line meandered through the present day Ironstone Ranch, making its way out to West High Street, where it continued east, eventually following the present day route out of town.

In 1849, the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) took operation of the HPMtJ&L and continued to operate trains along the same route until 1880, when the PRR began a series of improvements and realignments, and eventually the tracks through Ironstone Ranch were abandoned.

According to Torrico, the tracks through the ranch were torn up between 1902 and 1903.

What Else is Planned

The running of a locomotive and funeral car is just the beginning of what’s in store during the two-day event at Stone Gables Estate on April 22 and 23.

The Herr’s Mill Covered Bridge, which was built in 1844 and spanned the Pequea Creek some 40 miles away, was recently dismantled and restored and will be brought to the ranch.

Crews are currently working to install supports for one section of the nearly 200-foot bridge, which will span the Conoy Creek at an entrance to the property off Newville Road.

There will also be a sutler’s village, photo and history displays and living historic lectures by Abraham Lincoln presenter Fritz Klein.

Lincoln Funeral Train art will also be on display at a museum at The Star Barn.

There will be food, music and wagon rides as well.

For more info and to order tickets, go to: www.thestarbarn.com/event-calendar and click on “Lincoln Funeral Train Re-Enactment.”

Phase 2 of the HL&L

Torrico said at some point after the Lincoln Funeral Train event, work will begin on Phase 2 of the Harrisburg, Lincoln & Lancaster Railroad that will connect to the .62- mile route that will be constructed this spring.

Torrico said the ranch will be purchasing two more coach cars to carry passengers and will also be incorporating the second section of the Herr’s Mill Covered Bridge into the railroad design.

Torrico said the plan is to have the train travel through, not under, the second section of the bridge.

Torrico said for now, the plan is to have the railroad open to special events, like weddings and corporate functions, but could be open to tourists on a limited basis.

But that’s all farther down the line, so to speak.

“Once the word gets out that we have this one of kind attraction, at some point we’re going to have to think about being open to the public,” Torrico said.

2 responses to “‘One of A Kind’”

  1. Ginny Metz- Roth says:

    My husband is a civil war reenactor. I know he would love to be a part of the Lincoln funeral train. Contact if needed.

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