Out of steam Springfield railroad museum closes; man buys colle

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Although the Frisco Railroad Museum has run out of steam and is closed after a 16-year run, its collection of historic items will stay in Springfield.

Springfield Underground president Louis Griesemer bought the collection and hopes to interest other groups in helping preserve a variety of Frisco Railway records, photographs and historic items.

The museum board decided to close the nonprofit museum as it became more difficult to attract visitors interested in a railroad that no longer exists, museum founder Alan Schmitt said.

Members of the museum association are being notified of the decision by the nonprofit organization's board, he said. The museum, with displays in old Frisco cars on Commercial Street, hadn't kept regular hours for months.

There are no plans to re-create the museum, but some items will be displayed in public areas at the Frisco Building, which is owned by Springfield Underground, Griesemer said.

The 125,000-square-foot building was erected as Frisco headquarters in the 1960s. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, Dairy Farmers of America and O'Reilly Automotive are among its other occupants.

Now, 240 boxes of everything from locomotive operating manuals and uniforms to furniture are in storage.

Though the museum's collection will remain in Springfield, Commercial Club president John Luce is concerned about the departure of one of the anchors of the Commercial Street historic district.

"We hate to lose that amenity," he said. "I was not aware they were leaving."

'A destination location'

The museum was important to Commercial Street because it attracted people to the area, he said.

"Obviously, it was a destination location for Commercial Street," the Springfield architect said.

Much of the collection will be made available to researchers and Griesemer hopes more people can see some Frisco artifacts in other places. He'd like to talk to Springfield-Greene County Library officials about displaying some material at the new Library Station on North Kansas Expressway.

Library district officials have said they were interested in displaying items from it.

While much of the collection consists of company records and engineering drawings as well as photographs -- one is a panorama shot of a company picnic at Turner's Station showing hundreds of people -- other items are from Frisco trains, Griesemer said.

A couple of the more impressive items are light drums from the Will Rogers and Meteor passenger trains, he said. Those are large circular lighted signs that displayed the train's name from the last passenger car.

"Anything that had the Frisco logo on it, we've probably got one of," he said.

The future of the museum's railroad cars is less certain because there are no plans to move them.

There have been inquiries about purchasing the museum's streamlined passenger car.

"Hopefully, it's another beginning," Griesemer said of a purchase that headed off an out-of-town buyer. "Maybe there are some possibilities that by partnering with some other organizations, we can get this stuff out where more people can enjoy it and research it."

A self-described "railroad nut," Griesemer served on the Frisco Museum board in its early years and said he approached museum founder Schmitt about buying the collection when he heard it might leave Springfield.

While Griesemer declined to disclose the purchase price, "I said, 'I'll match that (offer) to keep it in town.' It was what he needed to close out the thing and get him out of the hole."

Created by Schmitt in Ash Grove in 1986, the museum eventually was billed as the largest repository of records from the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway.

That came after Schmitt moved the museum to an empty Frisco control center building in 1993.

The museum's high-water mark came in 1996, when it acquired the streamlined passenger car and a caboose from Republic.

The museum also at the time announced a $250,000 expansion plan that would have converted a dozen freight cars into walk-through exhibits.

That plan never became reality, however.

"Like a number of similar organizations over the past few years, we've observed the farther we get from the end of the operation of the Frisco -- it's been 22 years -- we've seen a decline in the interest in the Frisco, and a decline in volunteers," said Schmitt, now a Methodist minister.

By mid-2002, the museum stopped opening for regular hours, and a crop of weeds grew up around its streamlined passenger car, two cabooses and boxcar displayed outside.

The BNSF will be notified that the museum has been closed so it can reclaim its property, Schmitt said. In 1980, the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway merged with the Burlington Northern Railroad.

The Frisco's role in Springfield history continued to recede as Burlington Northern moved a variety of operations elsewhere, then merged with the Santa Fe Railroad.

"Actually, I do feel good about it," Schmitt said of the collection's sale. "My original intent in 1986 was to aggressively try and protect and preserve as much of the Frisco as I possibly could. That was my ultimate goal. I feel like at this point in time that goal was accomplished."