The Lincoln County Express child-size train that spent decades rusting away amid the brush along Route 66 east of Stroud, Oklahoma, has been restored and moved next to the landmark Rock Cafe in Stroud.
Oklahoma Route 66 Association President Rhys Martin reported in a Facebook post on the Historic Route 66 page that the city of Stroud purchased the train, restored it and placed it next door to the Rock Cafe in town.
Martin found out about the locomotive in 2014, contacted the creator’s family and wrote an article about it for This Land magazine.
Paul Hicks, a pipeline welder, fashioned from metal the train, a cactus, a Martian and two cows during the mid-1970s near Graham Road east of Stroud.
Hicks died in 2001, and it fell into disrepair. Though it sat just a few yards from Route 66, few travelers noticed it because vegetation covered it up much of the time.
Martin saw it by happenstance out of the corner of his eye while returning from a Route 66 trip in western Oklahoma.
Martin wrote at the time:
I felt like I’d stumbled across a secret: there were no fences, nor signs telling me I was trespassing. The surrounding countryside was quiet aside from the occasional car that sped by. Since then, I’ve stopped a few more times over the last few months to observe it in the winter and capture it in a different light. For me, the little train represents the whole of Route 66 and the state of the historic highway. It’s a reminder of a bygone era, when a trip was as much about the journey as the destination.
(Images courtesy of Rhys Martin)
Not a “train” – a locomotive.
Choo-choo-ca-boogie!
Did they get the other sculptures that were located by the locomotive too?