The Woodward Depot.....

For the present time Woodward is the final destination of a hard surfaced bike trail from Ankeny to Woodward.  It has been created on the old train bed.  The track has been torn out in different parts for years.  The track was still in 20 years ago to Woodward but then they just tore it all out and grain is now trucked. I remember the sounds at night when the grainary would move the railroad cars around and bang them together to connect them.

The depot for the train when passengers rode the tracks has been torn down.  It was gone before I moved here 35 years ago.  Passenger train travel was shut down many years ago with Iowa having now only two major lines of track left.  One is north of here going east and west and another that is south which runs through my parents town of Osceola.  That south line that also runs east and west  is the Amtrack line for coast to coast travel.

A local historian suffers over the decision to call this our depot as it really was the storage shed.  Just to the right of it are the evidences of a foundation of a two story depot with bay windows and large overhanging eaves.  This building has been renovated and doors and windows have been added to make it appear to be a depot.  It really is a great recreation for the community even though it isn't the real thing.

Because of the celebration of the opening of the bike trail, the town had an art show of the local artist as a means to showcase their work.  Della and I had a few things here and I did get to help hang this show two days before the winery show.

Among the things on the wall here are works of mine and Della.  She created the fox and iris painting and I contributed the barn and lighthouse work.

One of my former students had wonderful photographs to hang and the ones above are ones of the new high trestle bridge at night.  I did blog about that previously.

Della's painting here is a stone bridge that is in Ledges State Park.  Unfortunately the artificially created lake near it backs up into this park almost every year and the lower part of this park is underwater a lot of the time. As you can see the works of art have been placed on the sliding door of the building.

This is a new item added to the depot. I assume that the wheel base is original but I don't know exactly what the wagon part would be a part of unless they kept spare coal for the steam engines. It doesn't look like a luggage wagon but I guess it could be that too.

It was a busy weekend but the town realized that the building could really be used to promote many different events.

Thanks for stopping by......I am in the Spanish room today trying to resurrect my rusty foreign language knowledge.