Little workshop produces a Leviathan

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Dave Kloke shows off the reproduction of the 1860s Leviathan steam locomotive he built at his shop in Elgin. | Dave Shields~For Sun-Times Media

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Updated: January 8, 2012 10:00PM

ELGIN — Few people realize that a handful of factories in the United States still make old-fashioned, huffing-and-puffing steam locomotives. And probably even fewer realize one of those places is on Elgin’s far-southeast side.

When the building construction business took a nosedive, 65-year-old earth-moving contractor Dave Kloke decided to combine his ironworking ability with his longtime fascination for Abraham Lincoln. So he began to build an almost-exact copy of an 1860s locomotive named the Leviathan. Finishing that, well, leviathan project in 2009, he displayed the engine last summer at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union and at train shows in Michigan, Iowa and Rock Island.

That led to an order for him to build a similar locomotive for a theme park in Pennsylvania, which is now under construction. And now Kloke has begun raising funds to build a replica of the train car that carried Lincoln’s body from Washington back to Springfield after his assassination in 1865. In April 2015, Kloke hopes to re-enact that historic 14-day trip, which arguably was the most-seen and best-publicized train trip in history.

Located in an area named Spaulding — a center for light industry and railroad-track connections along the Elgin-Bartlett border — the home base of Kloke Locomotive Works LLC has several exotic earth-moving machines in its grassy front yard, along with a fleet of assorted semis around its gravel yard. But inside a cluttered metal shed filled with thousands upon thousands of metal parts and tools and machines, Kloke’s greatest achievement to date sits on a metal stand.

Sister to history

Forty-five feet long and weighing 88,000 pounds (including its bright-red fuel-and water-carrying tender), this is “Leviathan 63,” a reproduction of a Central Pacific Railroad locomotive of the same name that was built in 1868. The Leviathan was a sister of the historic steam engine Jupiter, which participated in the 1869 “driving of the golden spike” ceremony at Promontory Point, Utah. The ceremony marked completion of one dream Lincoln put into motion but never lived to see — a transcontinental railway route linking the populated East with the frontier West.

“The Leviathan and Jupiter had just a fraction as much power as a modern diesel locomotive. But they were the big dogs of their day,” Kloke said as he showed off his pride and joy. Gleamingly painted in black and red, its drive wheels alone stand 5 feet high.

“People think steam engines of that era were dirty because of how they’re shown in Hollywood movies,” he said. “But they were painted in bright colors like this; and at the end of every run, men came out to wipe them clean. If you wanted to work for a railroad in those days, your first job would be as a wiper.”

He and his construction company employees “putzed with this as a part-time, fill-in-work project for 10 years,” Kloke said. “Then when the construction business collapsed, we got more serious.”

Kloke’s research for re-creating the Jupiter included borrowing wooden foundry “patterns” for the locomotive’s parts that were still being stored by the National Park Service in Utah. The patterns filled 13 boxes, each 2 feet tall, 6 feet wide and 8 feet long. Foundry workers used sand molds to turn the wooden shapes into iron shapes to create the pieces that make up Leviathan 63.

The bright-red 5-foot wheels even bear the same wording as the original locomotive: “May 15, 1861 by A. Atwood — James C. Heath & Co.”

“It was a labor of love. We never really added up the cost of everything,” he said.

Drawing attention

When he took Leviathan to the train shows and the Union museum last summer, he carried it right out in the open on the bed of a semitrailer truck. And that drew some wide-eyed stares, he said.

“Out on Route 64, we came across a guy riding a crotch rocket (motorcycle). He slowed up and took out his cellphone camera and was snapping pictures as he sat on that motorcycle doing 60.”

The Leviathan 63’s spreading fame provoked a call from organizers of a railway-themed amusement park named Steam Into History being put together in the York-Hanover Junction section of Pennsylvania. They have hired Kloke to build a similar steam engine for them, to be completed next summer. Already that engine’s wheels, boiler and chassis are taking form in Kloke’s cluttered workshop.

Only a few non-historical details have been changed. For one thing, while the original Leviathan burned wood, the reproductions burn oil. The Pennsylvania people also have asked that a different kind of cow-catcher be put on their locomotive so that it matches the cow-catchers used on the railroad that served York, Pa., in the 1800s.

Funeral car

But right now, Kloke’s biggest interest is in raising money to build a copy of what he calls “the Lincoln funeral car.” After Honest Abe was assassinated in April 1865 while watching a play in Washington, D.C., his body was transported on a two-week long arc around the entire northeast corner of the United States on its way back to Lincoln’s home town of Springfield, Ill. The “funeral train” stopped at every large town, and thousands turned out at each stop — sometimes in the middle of the night — to see the coffin and say goodbye to their beloved leader.

In Illinois, the funeral train didn’t visit Kane County but made its way down the ”Chicago & Alton” line from Chicago through Joliet, Dwight, Pontiac and Bloomington to Springfield.

In Joliet, throngs gathered to see it as it chugged into town just before midnight on May 2, 1865. According to a book about the trip, “The Lincoln Funeral Train” by Scott D. Trostel, people in the Lockport area stood at trackside with flaming torches while others lit huge bonfires in the fields. In Joliet, mourners had erected an arch of timbers over the track, decorated with flowers, evergreens and flags. A meteor passed through the sky just as the train entered Joliet, as if even God were saluting the Great Emancipator. As rain began to fall, the train stood in Joliet for an hour as its engine took on wood and water; the Joliet Coronet Band played a funeral dirge; a choir sang “There is Rest for Thee in Heaven”; and many people walked through the funeral coach to view the closed coffin (only the third time the general public was allowed to do this).

The body of Lincoln’s little son Willie, who died in the White House while his father was president, had been exhumed from a Washington cemetery and was being carried back to Springfield in a second coffin in the same car.

But Trostel writes that even Joliet’s commemoration was nothing compared to the estimated 100,000 people who had jammed into Springfield to see the train when it arrived at its final destination at 9 o’clock the next morning.

Seeking funds

The car that held the body was a private coach named “United States,” which had been built for use as the Air Force One of 1865. But it was finished too late to be used for anything but Lincoln’s funeral.

The original “United States” later was used as a private car for millionaires and was destroyed by a fire in 1911, Kloke said. But using plans and photos from the era, 84-year-old civil engineer Bob Hunter and another engineer named Chris Dewit have created blueprints for the re-creation.

Kloke has set up a nonprofit organization named the Historic Railroad Equipment Association to collect donations for the re-creation. “The gun is cocked on the project but we need $200,000 to get going on it,” he said. Besides asking for individual donations, he and a handful of fellow enthusiasts will apply for grants from governmental bodies and foundations, and will try to interest a producer in turning the project into a TV documentary or a reality show.

If enough money comes in to build the car, Kloke said, he hopes to arrange with today’s railroads and the towns along the route to re-enact that 1865 funeral train trip on its 150th anniversary in spring 2015. Bill Werst of Elgin, one of several volunteers working on the fundraising, said the Union League Club of Philadelphia has promised to help.

Also on Kloke & Co.’s agenda is making a reproduction of “CNW Rail Car #1,” a passenger car that ran between Chicago and Elgin on the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad when that forerunner of the Chicago & North Western became the first railroad operating out of what would become America’s railway capital.

For more information, or to donate to the Lincoln funeral car project, people can visit www.leviathan63.com.

Meanwhile, Kloke said anyone who wants to see the Leviathan 63 probably will be able to do so at the Illinois Railway Museum sometime this summer. It probably also will go to 2012 train shows in North Carolina, Cleveland, and possibly Florida and Indiana.