The Burlington and Northwestern Railway (B&NW) was a narrow gauge railroad system in Iowa that operated during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It connected Burlington, Iowa with branches to Washington and Oskaloosa, Iowa. Incorporated in 1875 as the Burlington and Northwestern Narrow Gauge Railway Company, it began carrying traffic in 1876, when it also dropped 'narrow gauge' from its corporate name. The line reached Washington in 1880, operating over of track. In 1881, the Burlington and Western Railway Company, a subsidiary of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) was formed to connect the line to Oskaloosa, completed in 1883. For two decades, both lines were operated as a single system, until on June 20, 1902, the system was widened to standard gauge and the B&NW was adsorbed by the B&W. Later that year, the system was leased to the CB&Q, and in 1903, the entire system was deeded to the CB&Q.W. W. Baldwin, The Burlington and Western Railway Company, Corporate History of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company and Affiliated Companies Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, 1921; pages 203-207.Willard I. Toussaint, Charles Mason and the Burlington-Northwestern Narrow Gauge Railroad, The Annals of Iowa, vol. 38, no. 3 (Winter 1966); pages 186-203.J. P. Crittenden and Chas. B. Helffrich, Burlington and Northwestern Rw. Co., New York Securities, A Descriptive and Statistical Manual of the Corporations of New York City and Brooklyn, and the Railroads of the United States, New York Securities, 1893; pages 257-258.
The B&NW-B&W system was one of only two narrow-gauge lines in Iowa to survive into the 20th Century. Only the Bellevue and Cascade lasted longer.Ben H. Wilson, Iowa and the Narrow Gauge, The Palimpsest, vol. 13, no. 4 (1932); pages 141-153, discussion of the B&NW starts on page 151.
Route Burlington and Northwestern The Burlington and Northwestern owned of main-line track, in addition to operating rights over of Burlington, Cedar Rapids and Northern (BCR&N) track. The line was built with 30 pound rail, and it had 38 wooden trestles with an aggregate length of .Report of the Burlington & Northwestern Railway Company for the year ending June 30, 1884, Board of Railroad Commissioners Annual Report, 1884; pages 454-464. By 1892, the number of trestles had been reduced to 22 with an aggregate length of . The longest trestle was long. One bridge was installed, but the remainder of the reduction in trestles must have been the result of adding fill.Report of the Burlington & Northwestern Railway Company for the year ending June 30, 1892, Board of Railroad Commissioners Annual Report, 1892; pages 673-686.
The B&NW tracks ran north along Front Street in Burlington, Iowa, starting at the corner of Market and Front Streets, paralleling the BCR&N tracks to a yard, turntable and roundhouse just north of Burlington. The B&NW initially had a small storefront on Front Street, very near the south end of the line, but later used the BCR&N depot. This was a double storefront on the corner of Jefferson and Front Streets, directly across Front Street from the Diamond Jo Line offices and steamboat docks.Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Burlington, Des Moines County, Iowa, Sanborn Map Company, 1888; see map pages 4, 2, 10 (listed South to North).Henry Wellge, 1889 perspective map of the city of Burlington, Ia., American Publishing Co., Milwaukee, 1889; Library of Congress Map. Collection. Note: the label O marking the depot is on the wrong building. Later, the B&NW tracks were apparently extended south into the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy yard to that line's freight house.Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Burlington, Des Moines County, Iowa, Sanborn Map Company, 1900; see map pages 10, 4, 3, 40, 47, 48, 54, 58 (listed South to North). Note: The track layouts on maps 10 and 4 do not reconcile, so the evidence to track to the CB&Q freight house is not solid.
The B&NW used the BCR&N tracks for north of their Burlington yards. Since the latter was a standard-gauge line, 3-rail dual-gauge track was used.Burlington and North-western, Railway World, vol. 7, no. 29 (July 16, 1881); page 689. The line served the BCR&N stations at Sperry and Mediapolis along this stretch. The climb from the Mississippi River at Burlington up to Sperry involved a long 1.15 percent grade following Dry Branch Creek; this appears to have been the ruling grade for the entire system.
Just north of Mediapolis, the B&NW turned west on its own right-of-way, passing through Yarmouth, on the way to Winfield. The route continued through Crawfordsville before reaching Washington, where tracks entered town street running north on 2nd St. (renamed 6th Ave. by 1902).Ben H. Wilson, Widening the Narrow Gauge, The Palimpsest, vol. 13, no. 4 (1932); pages 154-165, see map, page 158. The line ended at a Wye just south of the Rock Island depot. The B&NW Washington depot was inside the south end of the wye.Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Washington, Washington County, Iowa, 1892; see detail map, page 2.Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Washington, Washington County, Iowa, 1902; see map pages 7 and 6.
Burlington and Western The Burlington and Western main-line was long, in addition to operating rights over of Burlington and Northwestern and Burlington, Cedar Rapids and Northern track into Burlington. The line was built with 35 pound rail. It had 2 iron bridges with an aggregate length of and 51 wooden trestles with an aggregate length of . Report of the Burlington & Western Railway Company for the year ending June 30, 1884, Board of Railroad Commissioners Annual Report, 1884; pages 465-464. By 1892, there were still just 2 iron bridges, one long, one long. The number of trestles had been reduced to 39 with an aggregate length of ; the longest single trestle was .Report of the Burlington & Western Railway Company for the year ending June 30, 1892, Board of Railroad Commissioners Annual Report, 1892; pages 687-699.
The B&W line was constructed west from Winfield at the same time that the Iowa Central Railway was being built. The Iowa Central crossed the Burlington and Northwestern at Winfield, and the lines paralleled each other, crossing three times on the way to Oskaloosa. Battles for right-of-way between these two lines included confrontations where crews from both lines vandalized the work of their competitors.David Lotz and Charles Franzen, Rails to a County Seat, The Print Shop, Washington Iowa, 1989; pages 39-41 discuss the "Brighton Railroad Wars," page 43 discusses the Mason Bogie.
The B&W route passed through Noble and Coppock on the way to Brighton, where it crossed the Iowa Central. Crooked Creek flows into the Skunk River just south of Coppock; both the B&W and the Iowa Central had to build substantial bridges over both of these to reach the village. The bridge over the Skunk River, between Coppock and Brighton, was the site of some of the most intense battles between the B&NW and Iowa Central. The two lines crossed again at Brighton.
From Brighton, the line passed through Packwood and Pekin; between these two, it crossed the Milwaukee Road. From Pekin, it continued through Martinsburg to Hedrik where it crossed another branch of the Milwaukee. There were crossings of the Iowa Central both east and west of Hedrick.
The line continued from Hedrick through Fremont and Cedar before entering Oskaloosa from the southeast. The Chicago and Northwestern branch to Muchakinock, Iowa, completed in 1884, crossed the line between Cedar and Oskaloosa.Annual Report of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company for the Twenty-Sixth Fiscal Year Ending May 31, 1885 Initially, there was no station at this crossing, but in late 1886, citizens of the area petitioned for a station house, noting that as many as 30 passengers a day were transferring there, and a building was erected at the crossing.Citizens of Harrison Tp. v. Chicago & Northwestern and Burlington & Western, Ninth Annual Report of the Board of Railroad Commissioners, State of Iowa, Geo. Roberts, Des Moines, 1886; pages 607-608.Photo, Stark, Iowa. CBQ-CNW, John P. Vander Maas Railroadiana Collection, University of Iowa Libraries; retrieved Jan. 2021. Timetables list the new station as Stark. The B&W crossed the Iowa Central again just inside the Oskaloosa city limits.Herald map of Mahaska County, Iowa, The Oskaloosa Herald, 1884; Library of Congress. The Oskaloosa depot was a block east of the Iowa Central depot. To get there, the B&W had to cross the Rock Island tracks twice.Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Oskaloosa, Mahaska County, Iowa; see map pages 3, 4, 16 and 9.
Traffic Despite the fact that both ends of the Burlington and Northwestern were well served by standard-gauge railroads, it was reasonably profitable at first. For the fiscal year ending 1880, the balance sheet shows a profit of $13,394.44 and a return on investment of 6%. Passenger traffic earned $9,345.36, almost all local, with only 12 passengers ticketed onward to connecting lines. Local freight earned $24,554,61 and through freight, originating or ending on other lines, earned $11,966.84. By tonnage, 56% of the freight was grain, 16 percent was livestock, and 13 percent was lumber. No other category made up more than 4% of the freight.Report of the Burlington & Northwestern Railway Co. for the year ending June 30, 1880, Board of Railroad Commissioners Annual Report, 1880; pages 522-529. Between 1883 and 1889, however, the line paid no dividends and managed to eke out a profit of under $13,000, from which it paid the property taxes of the Burlington and Western, which ran at a net loss during that period.John T. Gerry, letter to W. W. Ainsworth, Twelfth Annual Report of the Board of Railroad Commissioners for the year ending June 30, 1889, State of Iowa, Ragsdale, Des Moines, 1889; page 805. By 1893, the line had returned to a modestly profitable condition.Burlington and Northwestern Railway,Poor's Manual of Railroads, 1894, page 733.
The Burlington and Western with a route that closely paralleled by the Iowa Central, was not initially profitable. Passenger earnings for 1894 were 11,016.58, and freight earnings were $38,860.80.Burlington and Western Railroad, Poor's Manual of Railroads, 1894, page 733-734. Over the first 6 years of operation, it ran up a deficit of just over $43,000.
The B&NW and B&W both owned railway post office cars. Post office reports indicated that these cars made 6 trips a week out and back. In 1884, the B&W carried an average of 78 pounds of mail daily at an average speed of 12.75 MPH, including station stops along the route.Annual Report of the Postmaster-General of the United States for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1882, GPO, 1882; page 112, 210.Annual Report of the Postmaster-General of the United States for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1884, GPO, 1884; page 216.
Just about every station on both lines had a local grain elevator for outgoing grain, but the Harrison Elevator in Burlington, Iowa handled all grain destined beyond the system. This elevator handled 4,000,000 bushels in 1882.The Harrison Elevator, Commercial and Statistical Review of the City of Burlington Iowa, J.L. Spalding & Co., 1882; page 120. The Elevator was a frame building located on the corner of Front and Court streets and had a capacity of 150,000 bushels, powered by a 60 horse-power steam engine.Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Burlington, Des Moines County, Iowa, Oct. 1888; see map page 10. The elevator had a pair of bridges across the tracks evidently used for loading and unloading grain.Henry Wellge, 1889 perspective map of the city of Burlington, Ia., American Publishing Co., Milwaukee, 1889; Library of Congress Map Collection.