Looking Back: The Train Depot

View From the Tracks, Circa 1925. Mr. Tate, the station master. 
Photo credit: Grain Valley Historical Society


by Marcia Napier, Grain Valley Historical Society
 
While the train is the subject of a great deal of negative press in Grain Valley today, growing up in the 1950s and 60s, the train was a good, make that a great, asset for our town. After all, as stated many times, without the Chicago and Alton Railroad, there would be NO Grain Valley. And at the middle of last century, the train brought the mail; the train brought clothing and household items from J. C. Penney and Sears and Roebuck; the train brought seeds and roses from Jackson and Perkins, and on and on!
           
Let’s face it. In the 1950's, Grain Valley had fewer than 400 people, not a lot of cars waiting to cross over the railroad tracks. By the late 1960's, when the old depot was torn down, Grain Valley’s population had grown from 552 in 1960 to 709 in 1970; again, not a ton of cars or people waiting to cross the tracks. And if I had to guess, a really long train might have fifty cars. 

The Doodle Bug, which brought letters and packages each morning and evening usually had about 8 to 12 cars including the engine, the coal car and the caboose. Other than the freight cars carrying the mail and two or three passenger cars, the train was very short.  Of course, it always stopped at the depot, just West of the crossing to leave the mail, so the three or four cars had ample opportunity to pass.

The November 2024 calendar page shows the back side of the depot, as seen from the train. If you don’t know, this was the second depot in Grain Valley, located on the south side of Front Street, just west of Main Street. It was built around 1921 to replace the first depot which was destroyed by fire.  According to the 1904 map, that depot was located on the north side of the tracks and two blocks further east in the “original” town.