Train tracks from Gordonville to Delta likely to be sold for scrap

The train tracks running from Gordonville to Delta are probably going to be sold as scrap metal, said Danny Davis, who attended a meeting Thursday at Lowes & Drusch law office in Cape Girardeau, where the issue was discussed.

Davis is a master mechanic with The St. Louis Iron Mountain and Southern Railway, a not-for-profit organization operating a passenger train on the six miles of tracks from Jackson to Gordonville since 1986. He wants to see the tracks preserved in their entirety, and said there was a verbal agreement to keep the passenger track at the Thursday meeting.

Representatives from the track corporation, who want to sell it, and the not-for-profit group agreed to keep the six-mile passenger track and sell the remaining 12 miles from Gordonville to Delta.

Oliver Groseclose, the only one of the six shareholders who doesn't want to sell the track, said there hasn't been a written contract stating what exactly will be sold. But, Groseclose said, the other five shareholders do have the right by majority rule to sell the whole track.

Three of the shareholders, John Lorberg, Walter Drusch and Robert Adams, could not be reached for comment. George Peo and Robert Landgraf Sr. declined to comment.

Groseclose said the track corporation wants to sell the tracks as scrap because of the high price for scrap steel. A $1 million bid from a group called the Tie Yard of Omaha has been offered for the tracks from Delta to Gordonville, Groseclose said.

At the meeting, Robert Adams, one of the tracks' six shareholders, originally proposed accepting an offer of about $1.4 million from the group for the whole line of track from Delta to Jackson, Groseclose said.

Groseclose and Davis, among nine others at the meeting, rejected that offer.

Chris Bollinger, who has been a volunteer with the not-for-profit organization for 21 years, doesn't want to see the track torn up. But he wants to see the track corporation lose possession of the remaining passenger track.

"There's nothing left for them to manage," Bollinger said.