Alamo for Alcos on the A&M
Illustration by Otto M. Vondrak. Not all routes shown. Not an official map. ©2014 Carstens Publications, Inc.
0 5 10 MILES 15 20 Aurora Pierce City
BNSF (SLSF)
MONETT Purdy Butterfield Exeter Wayne Washburn Seligman Gateway Garfield Avoca Bentonville Rogers Lowell SPRINGDALE Johnsons Efay Fayetteville Jct. Fayetteville Greenland West Fork Woolsey
Winslow Frisco
Armada Mountainburg Amrita Lancaster Rudy Meadows Shibley Roland FORT SMITH Buell Cedars 33 r
Schaberg Chester
Brentwood On the Campaign Trail
Politicians on the campaign trail have made good use of the A&M pas- senger train. They can come out of their private quarters on the rear coach, ad- dress a crowd of people and then move on down the line to their next whistle stop. In 1990 Arkansas governor Bill Clinton ran for re-election as Arkansas’ chief executive office. Clinton and his wife, Hillary, campaigned by train from Fort Smith to Rogers, deep into the heart of Republican-domiated North- west Arkansas just prior to that year’s November vote.
“I tried to find a book of Harry Tru- man’s train speeches, but couldn’t, so I’ll have to use my imagination,” said Clinton in a speech before his train left Fort Smith. The campaign special used Reed and McClanahan’s streamlined coaches and Tony Hannold’s private heavyweight business car Traveler on the rear of the train. After crossing the Arkansas River at Fort Smith the train stopped at the historic Frisco depot on Main Street of the river town of Van Buren. After a whistle stop in Chester, the Clinton special traveled on to Fayetteville to the former Frisco depot, on Dickson Street near the University of Arkansas campus. Clinton greeted
ABOVE: A&M Alco C-420 no. 44 was captured in Van Buren after leading a passenger train from Springdale on November 3, 2013. Most of the A&M locomotives have brass bells. RIGHT: Tony Hannold, former president and founder of the Arkansas & Missouri Railroad, sits in the rear parlor area of his business car Traveler circa 1993. Hannold retired from the railroad in 1998.
run from Springdale to Van Buren two to three days per week. During the Christmas season in December, the A&M operates children’s trains in- spired by the movie The Polar Express.
many of his old friends and UA col- leagues in Fayetteville and the train then pushed on to Springdale and Rogers. Clinton later sent Tony Han- nold a letter thanking him for one of the finest days of campaigning he had ever experienced.
Not to be outdone by his Democratic predecessor, Arkansas’ Republican governor Mike Huckabee organized a well attended campaign train in 1998 through the same communities cam- paigned by Clinton eight years earlier.
The A&M’s Main Man
A&M president Tony Hannold ap- preciated railroad history and photog- raphy. He drove a Volvo painted the same burgundy color as the A&M’s lo- comotives. Hanging on his office wall in Springdale was a vintage photograph of a steam train along a river on the Boston & Maine Railroad. Hannold un-
MISSOURI ARKANSAS
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ARKANSAS OKLAHOMA
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