Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 110, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1919 — Wisconsin Village of 350 Persons Issues Bonds and Builds Its Own Railroad [ARTICLE]

Wisconsin Village of 350 Persons Issues Bonds and Builds Its Own Railroad

If you haven’t a railroad to youi farmhouse door, build one! That’s what the farmers of one locality have done. No longer is Ettrick, a town of 850 inhabitants, in isolation ten miles from the nearest railroad and without adequate outlet to the trade markets. For Yankee pluck has again triumphed Over all obstacles and citizens of that township in Trempealeau county proudly survey the ten-mile railroad they recently finished building. Ettrick wanted a railroad and the companies declined to build one. So, in spite of war conditions, the citizens financed the $300,000 project by a $175,000 bond issue and the sale of stock in the ten-mile branch line. Then they built it. Labor was not available, so the banker and butcher, doctor and merchant, old, middleaged, and young men, worked Sundays, week days and holidays, morning, noon and night, 4nd finally themselves completed the little railroad. Since January, when it was finished end connected with the Green Bay & Western at Blair, 34 cars of grain, many cars of stock and other products have gone by rail from Ettrick. The Green Bay & Western supplies the equipment