A Witness to History

On a recent road trip I and two of my faithful minion, Little Nick and Tom Anderson came across the historic old train depot in McLean, Illinois.  Built in 1853 it would already have a claim to fame as the oldest building in town and a rare wooden depot. But it has one other notable distinction. It's one of two depot's left standing that saw Abraham Lincolns funeral train go by.

The civil war ended in 1865 and like the rest of the country Lincoln felt like an enormous weight lift off his shoulders. There was still the weighty problem of reconstruction to be dealt with as well as hundreds of thousands of suddenly freed slaves but for the moment the country was celebrating.  Not everyone, however, was happy with the wars outcome and one man took it upon himself to express his anger in a very tangible way.

Everyone knows the story of what happened that night at Ford's theater and I won't go into it here.  On April 21st a funeral train left Washington D.C. for an arduous journey across the nation to deposit Lincoln back in his home state of Illinois.  On May 2nd the train passed through McLean on it's way to its final destination.  The Chicago and Alton railroad no longer exists but the McLean depot still does.

Most depots from this era are either torn down or sit abandoned sitting in the weeds forlorn and forgotten. But in this case the old McLean depot has been repurposed as, appropriately enough, a store for model trains.  The inside is almost the same as it was on that black day in 1865 and there even some old graffiti scrawled over the inside walls of the freight room. As an added bonus there's a couple of track inspection cars parked outside. So if you ever get a chance to visit, go on inside and visit a piece of genuine history.