Delivering Newspapers to Iowa City by Rail in the 1950's

by Rudy Schulz

The possibility of again linking Iowa City with Chicago by rail passenger service has received a lot of attention in the media and in our state legislature. Hopefully, we will again have rail service between Iowa City and Chicago in the not too distant future. With all the attention that the renewal of rail service between Iowa City and Chicago has received, I am  reminded of a time when the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad linked the two cities on a regular basis. Iowa City's rail depot was the place where we first greeted colleagues, friends, and family when they came to visit Iowa City. Also, it was possible in those days to leave Iowa City on a Rock Island "Rocket" for Chicago in the late afternoon and have a delightful, unhurried trip to Chicago. On the ride to Chicago, you were treated to Grant Wood scenery, you could enjoy a dry martini in the parlor car, you could have a delicious dinner in the dining car and you arrived at LaSalle Street station in Chicago in the early evening rested and refreshed.

I have memories too of that same Iowa City depot at an earlier time, a number of years before I would reside in this beautiful city, indeed before I even knew anything about Iowa City beyond its location. When I was a college student at Northwestern University in the middle 1950's, I worked on trains during the summers to raise money for the upcoming school year. My job was with the Railway Express Agency (REA) as what they called an REA Messenger. I traveled throughout the Midwest filling in for the regular messengers when they took their summer vacations. The REA was an earlier day UPS. People sent freight and packages by Railway Express to everywhere since at that time trains still went everywhere and fast. A messenger's main job was to unload and load parcels and freight from the Railway Express car at the front of the train at each stop made by a train on the route to its destination. Out-of-town newspapers (e.g., New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, etc.) were also delivered via Railway Express. Such deliveries were routine most of the time; but the newspaper deliveries to Iowa City on Saturday nights, actually very early Sunday morning about 2AM, were definitely anything but routine.

On Saturday nights, the Sunday newspapers, 20 to 25 bundles of papers, for Iowa City, came out of Chicago by Railway Express on the Rock Island line. Sunday papers were fat back then too. Having fat papers on Saturday night isn't what made their delivery unusual. What made the delivery unusual is the fact that papers arrived in Iowa City on Sunday morning on-the-fly, as the method of delivery was called. The train that delivered the Sunday papers to Iowa City was one of the Rock Island's so called crack trains, the Golden State Limited. The Golden State Limited did not stop at Iowa City; it went through Iowa City nonstop and fast. I was a messenger on that train; it was one of my assignments to deliver Iowa City's papers. How do you deliver papers under these circumstances? Not without considerable difficulty.

Here is how it was done. I would arrange the bundles of Sunday papers in the open door of the express car east of Iowa City. As the train approached Iowa City, I got ready to make delivery. When the express car was opposite the REA Office on Dubuque Street, east and across the street from the depot, I kicked the bundles of papers out of the door of the express car. This kick was the crucial element in the on-the-fly delivery method. With good luck and a proper kick, the papers landed, bundles intact, at the door of the station ready to provide the fine citizens of Iowa City with Sunday morning reading pleasure. With bad luck or a poor kick, the bundles would exit from it, would hit the signal pole directly in front of the depot, split open, bounce off the signal pole and land under the wheels of the speeding train where they were instantly shredded and ground into a large volume of confetti. The turbulent air surrounding the swiftly moving train then scattered the shredded papers all over the station and for a block along the railroad's right-of-way beyond the station. Sorry, Iowa City readers, no paper from Chicago this Sunday!

Please remember this all happened almost 60 years ago. I hope it was Iowa City where I delivered those Sunday papers on-the-fly. If not, the confetti landed elsewhere in Iowa. I know it was Iowa!