Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha Road Turntable

In 1900, the Des Moines Valley Railway

Company completed a thirty-eight mile branch line extending from Bingham Lake to Currie. The line was immediately purchased by the

Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway—commonly called the Omaha Road.

Rumors that the railway would extend westward proved untrue, and Currie remained the

terminus of the line, known as the Currie Branch. Because there was only a single track on the Currie-Bingham Lake line, a hand-operated turntable was constructed in Currie in 1901, in order to more easily turn the steam engines around and return them east to Bingham Lake.

Constructed by the American Bridge Company of Chicago, the original 1901 turntable was a fifty-six-foot wood and steel turntable. In 1922, due to steam engines getting larger and damage sustained on the original turntable, workers expanded the pit and installed a longer seventy-foot turntable bridge, formerly used in Pipestone, MN; this is the turntable bridge that remains today. The pit that the turntable spins in is lined with a four-foot high, dry stacked limestone wall on each side that is original to the turntable’s creation in 1901. The stones were dry stacked so carefully that no cement was needed to hold them in place. When the pit was expanded to its current size in 1922, a layer of cement was placed on top of the limestone around the perimeter of the structure. At the areas of the wall where the turntable sits in its resting position, there are concrete abutments topped with railroad ties.

 As was the case with rural railways throughout the state, passenger traffic on the Currie Line peaked in the early 1920s, then began a swift decline, due to the advent of the automobile. In the 1950s, diesel engines began to replace steam locomotives, rendering the turntable largely unnecessary. As a result, the railroad yard, turntable and tracks fell into disrepair. The last train left Currie in April 1977, and the Currie Branch line was officially abandoned in January 1980. However, before the line was officially abandoned, local residents took the initiative to preserve the community’s railway heritage and its historic turntable. In 1972, the local 4-H Club, called the Poco-a-Poco 4-H Club, launched a project to restore the turntable and repair the old depot. Their efforts ultimately led to the creation of the End-O-Line Railroad Park & Museum in 1975, part of the Murray County Parks Department. The turntable was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977

Etrheim, Jakob. Demuth, Nicholas. End-O-Line Self Guided Tour Book. Currie, MN. 2020.