Saving a Storied Engine: Northern Pacific 1356

The 1356 on display in Missoula, Montana, in her present deteriorated condition. Photo from the Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association (NPRHA)

1. The 1356: Keeper of Story and History

What can be said about a 1902 Class 5-4 engine that has seen more adventure than words can describe? Strong? Enduring? Fearless? - Martin Kidston, The Missoulian, July 20, 2014 

This blog was created to be a collection of stories and news about the 1356, the Northern Pacific Railway steam engine given to the city of Missoula and put on static display in 1955.

Former mayor John Engen called the 1356 a “keeper of story and history, community and magic.” Reporter Martin Kidston wrote that the engine is “a memorial to decades of steadfast service and dedication, by a locomotive and its Northern Pacific crews.”

The 1356 is a public icon, a keeper of stories. There are many threads of community and history that the 1356 represents and weaves together. Some of these stories are about how Missoula grew from 300 people in 1883 to a city of 12,000 by 1920 as the railroad helped grow stockyards, a sugar beet factory, wholesale grocers, and more. They are stories about grandparents coming to visit, sons and daughters going off to school and war, the engine’s 1943 wreck in the Bitterroot River.

And of course there’s the story about what was probably the most dramatic incident in the engine’s million-mile career, when she pulled a train through one of the biggest forest fires in U.S. history. In 1910, the Big Burn raged from Idaho into Montana, destroying over 3 million acres and several towns. The 1356 was one of the rescue engines that brought people from Idaho to safety in Missoula.

One of the goals of this website is to tell these stories and preserve them, before they are lost to the passage of time, and to reconnect the 1356 to her community.

As one of the founders of the restoration project, I’ll start this blog off with a little bit of my 1356 story. Some of it is family history. In 1955, at the advent of diesel, the 1356 was scheduled to be scrapped. My father, photographer Ron V. Nixon, was one of the people instrumental in saving her and seeing she was given to the city of Missoula for permanent display. (There was a celebration with speeches, a band and cheerleaders, but I was a babe in arms and I don’t remember that.)

For me, however, the family connection goes back further.

In the photo below, the man driving the wagon is my great grandfather, Peter Peterson. My grandmother, Elizabeth Nixon, is on the horse, and the little boy is my uncle Maynard. It’s about 1916 because Maynard was born in 1913. My great grandfather worked for an ice company hauling ice out of Rattlesnake Creek in Missoula. He and his family lived in various houses in the lower Rattlesnake, which was very much a working man’s, railroading community in those days. The image was taken somewhere in the Rattlesnake.

Missoula, Montana, about 1913; photograph by Stella Peterson

I rediscovered this photo when I was going through old family albums. My first thoughts were, wow, what a cool old Missoula shot, what a great horse, and good for my grandma that she didn’t let her best Sunday dress get in the way of getting on it. As if she would have. My grandmother loved horses like my father loved trains.

My great grandfather was living in Missoula during the Big Burn. My father was born a year later, in 1911. His father was a station agent for the Northern Pacific Railroad. He and his brothers visited their grandparents in Missoula often. There is no doubt that their grandparents told them stories about the great fire and the rescue trains, and the help people got when they arrived. Many of them fled with just the clothes on their backs, and the community rallied around them. (Here’s a link to an August 10, 1922, Missoulian story about the fire.)

My dad would follow in his father’s footsteps, working for the Northern Pacific. He was a telegrapher, dispatcher, wire chief in the Missoula depot. When he wasn’t working his day job he was chasing trains to photograph them. It was his goal to shoot every engine ever made. He started at the age of five; some 70 years later 20,000 photos from his collection ended up at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana.

One of my dad’s favorite trains was the 1356. I’m guessing part of that was because of the stories he heard from his grandparents about her.

So some of my story is, of course, an interest in preserving my father’s legacy. But thinking about that photo, and my great grandparents’ lives here, underlines for me how deep the stories go: how far they go back, and how interconnected we all are with Missoula’s railroad history. As I talk to people I keep hearing those common threads—parents who worked in the depot and the roundhouse, journeys taken, railroading families. So that is my interest in this 1356 project. I’m not too well informed about steam engines or trains in general—not what you might call a “foamer.” My interest is in story and community.

In 2009 then mayor John Engel issued a proclamation declaring May 9, 2009, as Missoula 1356 Day. In it he wrote, “Trains are magical for adults and children alike, and the 1356 still has plenty of magic, though its fires are out. The 1356, this keeper of story and history, community and magic, needs to be preserved for our children.”

Part of that reconnection involves restoring her to some of her former glory: fresh paint, lighting, maybe even some bells and whistles.

If the 1356 is going to be saved, she need help. That’s the goal of Friends of the 1356. The engine hasn’t been maintained in 20 years, and things are looking pretty grim. She has pigeons roosting in her cab, her paint is down to bare metal, her lettering and numbers are peeling away. She needs to be brought back to what she should be, a proud icon of Missoula’s railroad history.

Please join us in the effort to save her! You can send your story to stories@missoula1356.org. Or, you can help us keep the fires burning this winter. We need, and very much appreciate, your support. A small donation of $5 will keep the lights on (and this web page up and running). $10, $20, or more helps us get a sign—as of now there is no signage at the engine whatsoever—or evict the pigeons from the cab. If you can commit to an annual contribution, that would be great: it allows us to budget for the future and plan in-kind donations for grant writing.

Thank you for visiting!

73s

Jeannine Nixon

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