reprinted from Trains Copyright 1978 Katmbach Publishing Co.
Traditionally, businessmen have sought new and innovative ways
to promote and sell their companies’ products, often giving
rise to ingenious schemes and publicity stunts. These ranged from
traveling medicine shows to full-page newspaper advertisements to a
free lunch with the purchase of a five-cent beer. One such
leading name in the field of heavy farm machinery in the late
1880’s. Russell products were known and used around the world,
its trademark being a bull, ‘The Boss.’
To better advertise its line of threshers, steam-powered
engines, and separators, Russell gathered a large selection of its
products for rail shipment to its West Coast markets. Seventeen
flat-car loads of farm machinery were shipped together n regular
freight trains to Pacific Northwest customers in 1888. Russell
& Company received limited coverage in the newspapers along the
route of the mass movement of farm equipment, indicating that a
better promotional job could have been done.
The following spring, plans were drawn up for a solid train of
farm machinery to be shipped to the West Coast from the Massillon
plant: 26 flat cars carrying 32 steam traction engines, 46
separators, 24 horse powers (machines operated by horses), and
numerous small parts and attachments, a total of $80,000 in
merchandise. Each freight car carried a placard reading, ‘From
Russell & Company, Massillon, Ohio, to Russell & Company,
Portland, Oregon.’ The result was a billboard on wheels.
Prior to departure, the special train was assembled and
displayed to the public in the Russell & Company’s yard
adjacent to the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago depot. The
train was routed over the Wheeling & Lake Erie, Baltimore &
Ohio, Wisconsin Central, and Northern Pacific, running straight
‘through to Oregon’ with no delays. Freight charges
amounted to $8000. Accompanying the special train on its 2700-mile
journey were B&O’s J.S. Fairchild, Wisconsin Central’s
O.P. Gathlin, Northern Pacific’s W. W. Scully, and Russel &
Company’s E. C. Merwin. A W&LE caboose and passenger car
were placed at the rear of the train to provide accommodations for
the extra railroad personnel and Russell employees.
The morning of April 8, 1889, found W&LE 4-6-0 No. 33
coupled to the westbound special. The locomotive was one of a trio
of Camelback slack burners on the W&LE, a rare engine type west
of the Allegheny Mountains. She was ready to dig in with her 17,684
pounds tractive effort. Publicity photos were made of the unusual
consist.
After a small celebration, the highball was given and the
special left town. The nation’s first solid train of machinery
bound for the Pacific Northwest, as well as the largest single
shipment of steam traction engines up to that time, was on its
way.
Public response to the ‘Russell train’ was gratifying,
as advance newspaper publicity brought people to trackside to watch
the history-making train. The promotion had succeeded in displaying
Russell & Company products to a large amount of people, as well
as promoting the good name of the company itself. So successful was
the operation that another journey ‘through to Oregon’ was
planned for the following year.
At 7 a.m. on Monday, April 21, 1890, the second annual solid
train of Russell farm machinery departed Massillon for Portland.
This train consisted of 25 flat cars loaded with $70,000 worth of
threshers and portable steam engines. Its routing was arranged so a
different part of the country would be exposed to the Russell line
of products. (Incidentally, the Russell company previously had
built coal cars for the Cleveland, Lorain & Wheeling Railroad,
and freight and passenger cars for the Ohio & Pennsylvania
Railroad. One of the company’s earlier presidents, CM. Russell,
served on the board of directors of the O&P until 1860, and he
had invented and patented an iron railroad car the same year.)
A third annual West Coast shipment of Russell farm machinery
left Massillon on April 2, 1891, routed via the Wheeling & Lake
Erie; Toledo, St. Louis & Kansas City; St. Louis, Keokuk &
northwestern; Hannibal & St. Joseph; Kansas City, St. Joseph
& Council Bluffs; and Union Pacific. (Whew!)
It is interesting to note that promotional materials distributed
by Russell & Company for the 1891 West Coast shipment depicted
a W&LE 4-6-0 Camelback snaking its solid train of farm
machinery through the Rocky Mountains! Obviously the company used
the 1889 publicity photo as a basis for its later promotions, as
this photo shows just such a Camelback locomotive at the head of
the first special Russell train on the Ohio leg of the journey.
Apparently Russell personnel thought this locomotive to be
exemplary of all U.S. steam power. If that were not bad enough,
none of the three W&LE Camelbacks even existed at that time,
all having been converted into regular cab-at-the-rear locomotives.
However, such errors were (and are) pretty much standard for
advertising and public relations departments of non railroad
corporations.
These annual Russell shipments were carried out for several more
years until their novelty had worn off, and most major routes to
the Pacific had been used. In the late 1890’s such solid
Russell trains became scarce, with regular single-car shipments
predominating. However, the Russell people were to have one more
rolling billboard.
On April 22, 1899, a solid train of 30 flat cars loaded with
threshers worth $65,000 left the Russell plant in Massillon. Bound
for the Arbuckle, Ryan & Company, a Russell outlet in Toledo,
O., the train was the largest such shipment in several years.
Operating entirely over the W&LE, the final train was
accompanied by James N. Merwin, W&LE’s Toledo Division
Superintendent; Lyndon Hoover and C.L. Merwin of Russell &
Company’s office force; and John Ryder and Wendall Fox from
Russell’s manufacturing section. Although covering only a small
fraction of the distance traveled by the West coast trains, the
final movement was operated with the same aplomb accorded to
earlier shipments, including publicity photos and newspaper
stories.
The increasing nationwide popularity of International Harvester
internal combustion farm equipment was to have an effect on Russell
& Company products in the early decades of the twentieth
century not unlike the effect of Electro-Motive’s machines on
the railroads’ steam locomotives a half-century later. Even
though the Russell company has long been gone, today many varieties
of farm machinery ride solid or near-solid trains of flat cars in
the tradition initiated many years ago on those trains that ran
‘through to Oregon.’
