Recently, Rhonda and I stepped into a Cave City, Kentucky antique store to stretch our legs and hunt for treasures. You never know what you might find in these circumstances but you know it will always be interesting. My “find” of the adventure was a 1906 cabinet photo of a train. Not just any train, but the Mammoth Cave Dinkey Train, a.k.a. “The Steam Dummy.” The tiny, odd-shaped little engine and car ran on a 9-mile narrow gauged railroad track from Glasgow Junction (Park City) to Mammoth Cave from 1886 to 1931.
This 12” wide by 10” tall photo pictures a trio of men in individual oval images hovering in the sky above a couple of men posed at the front and back of the train looking back at the camera. The photo is captioned: “Souvenir From Mammoth Cave 1906” on the bottom margin. It pictures the “Car House” in the upper right corner and identifies the men as Engineer P.J. Moran, Conductor R.A. Hatcher, and Fireman B.H. Ageunder around each man’s image. The photo has the name “B.B. Warren Photographer” in the lower right corner on the front and is blank on the back. As I would later discover, the demise of the Mammoth Cave Railroad’s Dinkey Train has a couple Indianapolis connections.
According to the Mammoth Cave Hotel Register, on November 8, 1886 hotel guest W.F. Richardson paid $3.00 for ticket #1350 to become the first passenger on the Mammoth Cave Railroad. Although the route was only 8.7 miles long, the train made several stops along the way including Diamond Caverns, Chaumont Post Office, Long Cave, Union City, Grand Avenue Caverns, Ganter’s Hotel, Proctor’s Cave & Hotel, and Sloan’s Crossing. Although the Dinkey Train was affiliated with the Louisville and Nashville Railroad for 25 years, it was not built by the L&N; the L&N owned the railroad rights to Mammoth Cave.
The Dinkey Train consisted of a Baldwin “steam dummy” 0-4-2T type steam locomotive (formally used on street railways in Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee) and a single wooden combination coach to carry passengers and their luggage. The bright red coach car featured an open vestibule heated by a coal stove. The Dinkey Train could obtain speeds of 25–35 miles per hour but rarely traveled faster than ten. At any given time, there were usually two sets of Dinkey Trains operating simultaneously.
Before the Dinkey Train, in the three decades after the close of the Civil War, some 40,000 to 50,000 passengers annually rode the L&N Railroad to Glasgow Junction, then took a stagecoach to Mammoth Cave. Colonel Larkin J. Procter owned and operated the stagecoach line and also operated the Mammoth Cave Hotel and estate. Not only did the Dinkey Train play an important role in boosting tourism to Mammoth Cave during its early years, but it also served residents as an avenue of trade to ship farm products between the town of Glasgow Junction and the Cave region.
The “steam dummy” locomotive filled up with water at Glasgow Junction before pulling the coach up the Chester Escarpment, gaining 200 feet in elevation about every mile. The two-component train went through a series of hills and valleys while winding its way over a trestle at Doyle Valley and eventually into the Mammoth Cave hotel and estate. The train carried at least a three-man crew consisting of an engineer to run the locomotive, a boiler man to stoke the engine, and a conductor to tend to the passengers. Many times there were up to seven employees operating the train. On rare occasions, the train pulled additional cars besides the passenger coach.
The small steam locomotive was called a “dummy” because it was boxed up to look like an ordinary passenger streetcar. Its condensing engines operated without the noise of escaping steam. The housing, manufactured by the Baldwin Locomotive Works, covered the mechanics of the rods, linkage, pipes, bolts, rivets, and most of the moving parts. The steam engine locomotive was disguised to prevent horses from being spooked as it passed by.
The tiny 9-mile track from Glasgow Junction (Park City) to Mammoth Cave operated for 45 years. On October 7, 1904, the world of Kentucky cave tourism changed forever when an unnamed Indianapolis dentist unceremoniously drove the first automobile up to Mammoth Cave. Just two days prior, on October 5, a Louisville man and his wife drove the first automobile across the Southern border of Kentucky. So what should have been recognized as a historic first, quickly developed into a Bluegrass Boondoggle.
The dentist’s car pulled up to the historic arched entrance of the cave and immediately became stuck in the mud. Cave visitors and hotel guests, many of whom had never seen an automobile before, struggled alongside the dentist to get the car moving once again, to no avail. Eventually, the manager of the Mammoth Cave Hotel brought out a pair of mules and pulled the car out of the mud. During the ensuing motorcar melee, and likely as a result of the incurred indignity, the daredevil doctor’s name was never recorded and he remains unidentified to this day.
Regional tourism changed abruptly when that first automobile braved the bad roads to arrive at Mammoth Cave. Between 1904 and World War I, tourism accelerated, with many visiting the Kentucky cave region via the automobile. Railroads began to expand their vacation experiences to compete with this new “horseless carriage” trade. In 1913 an all-inclusive Mammoth Cave excursion cost $11.75 and included round trip railway fare, cave fees, hotel, and meals. In 1919, another Hoosier helped hasten the demise of the Dinkey Train when he drove the world’s first motor home, known as the Helomido camper truck and made by the Indiana Truck Corporation of Marion, Indiana, up to Mammoth Cave.
In 1919 Marion Indiana Navy Man Harry Goldthwaite, a former boson’s mate on Admiral Dewey’s flagship the Olympia (the ship that led the destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay in 1898), and a small group of Hoosier industrialists would strike out on a motor tour of the American West. Goldthwaite was president of the Boston and Big Store Companies as well as a trucking company known as the Motor Securities Corporation.
The Indiana Truck Company, founded in 1898 as a brass bed company, started producing trucks in 1910 and by World War I was a major player in the truck industry. Goldthwaite and Charles Barley, president of Indiana Truck decided upon a trip to California by a specially built truck camper, one of the first of its kind. The vehicle, assembled in Marion, was thirty feet long with a two-and-a-half-ton capacity. The camper rode on a truck chassis and was referred to as the “palace car” equipped with a refrigerator, electric cookstove, and a motorcycle. Curtains like those in a railroad Pullman car could divide the car with four pull-down berths. A row of seats was installed behind the driver for on the road use.
This camper truck hybrid was named “Helomido” after the first two letters of the names of the children of the truck company’s vice president J.W. Stephenson. The trip that began in Marion on August 10th, 1919 traveled to St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Cheyenne, and San Francisco, with a ten-day break for camping in the Rocky Mountains. Barley and Goldthwaite’s wives accompanied their husbands. The driver was Albert Spranger, an employee of the truck company who could double as a repairman should the need arise.
The trip of 3,279 miles took a total running time of 235 hours making an average of 14 miles per hour. Helomido was praised for its performance experiencing only two flat tires and a broken fan belt. This was also a first in that the truck made the distance solely on its own power and without a convoy.
The March 20, 1920, Richmond (Indiana) Item newspaper described the Helomido as a “Hotel on Wheels” and reported that the successful trip to Mammoth Cave was accomplished by driver Al Spranger, Lee Collins & Frank Sahner of Lewisville, and T.G. McGuigan of Marion. In the article, Collins reported, “I dared Al Spranger, the driver, to go to Mammoth Cave. The roads were very bad. To my surprise, Spranger accepted my proposition. The county judge of Hart county and two other gentlemen walked ahead of the Helomido, closely observing its behavior, while going down the long hill to cross the long bridge at Munfordville.”
The account continued, “When we arrived at the bridge it was necessary to use much persuasion to induce the bridge keeper to permit the Helomido to drive across. When we left Cave City it was decided to attempt to reach Mammoth Cave via the Mountain Road. We reached the top of the hills. We passed over the roads with little difficulty. One small bridge was crushed in. At last, we arrived at Mammoth Cave. We were informed by the hotel keeper that the Helomido was the first large truck that ever made the trip to the cave.” The trek made this Indiana motor home/RV the first of its kind to do so as well.
In 1921, an oil driller named George Morrison opened another entrance into Mammoth Cave. Competition between historic Mammoth Cave and Morrison’s “New Entrance to Mammoth Cave” led to vigorous competition among cave owners inciting the “cave wars” for tourists visiting the region. The cave wars, along with the rise of the motor car and camper car industry, sealed the doom of the railroad line. The establishment of the Mammoth Cave National Park in 1926 was the final nail in the coffin. The Dinkey Train discontinued service on February 28, 1929. It was replaced temporarily by a railcar for mail service until 1931 when it finally shut down permanently. On the first of August 1931, the railroad ceased operations.
In 1936, the rails were removed, but one of the last engines, dubbed Hercules for its pulling power, can still be seen today just south of the park’s visitor center. Hercules is displayed pulling a train car in the line’s distinctive red color. Today, visitors can travel by foot or bicycle on the rail path of the abandoned line which was converted to the Mammoth Cave Bike and Hike Trail in 2004. The rail-trail currently starts at Sloans Crossing Pond, however, work is underway to have the complete 9-mile trail from Park City to Mammoth Cave National Park terminus display of the Dinkey Train at the hotel.
Mammoth Cave has long been a popular tourist destination for Hoosier summertime travelers. So the next time you travel to (or past) Cave City Kentucky, make sure to pop over and visit the Dinkey Train at the NPS Mammoth Cave visitor’s center. Take a moment to walk around the cars and imagine what it was like to visit Mammoth Cave on old Dinkey a century ago. Just refrain from calling it a “steam dummy” though, as you might hurt the old gal’s feelings.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
