Bridge Reopening Ends Trans-Mississippi Trolley Saga : Flood: The Keokuk-Hamilton span, replaced for 2 weeks by innovation and an old train, is the only one open along 230 miles of river.

HAMILTON, Ill. —  The Keokuk-Hamilton Bridge is open across the Mississippi River again, and that means an end to the saga of the Little Trolley That Could.

Ten thousand tons of limestone dumped into the floodwaters restored service to the span on Monday, bringing the number of open bridges along a 230-mile stretch of the river to a grand total of one.

The triumph didn’t come on schedule. But cars can cross the river here again for the first time in two weeks--an especially welcome development in light of the levee break that closed the Quincy bridge Friday night.

Only two lanes, rather than the usual four, were open on this bridge between Illinois and Iowa, and cars could travel only 5 m.p.h. rather than the normal speed limit of 35. But traffic started lining up at the Illinois entrance five hours before the barricades were removed, bearing witness to the deep links between the people and the economies on both sides of the river.

With the Quincy bridge and others at Hannibal, Mo., and Ft. Madison, Iowa, all closed, local officials expect to see double the pre-flood traffic level of 13,500 cars across the bridge each day.

“Is the Keokuk bridge open yet?” plaintive callers asked Quincy radio station WGEM all day.

At 6:45 p.m., nearly four hours later than anticipated, a volunteer traffic monitor was given the signal to start waving traffic across.

With the bridge reopening, the Trans-Mississippi Trolley Co. will halt operations at noon today.

Within days after the river slid over the bridge access road here on July 5, Trolley No. 161, a 1920s-vintage car that once ran from Philadelphia to Norristown, Pa., began running on tracks used by work crews on the top of a concrete lock and dam just north of the shutdown bridge.

By serendipitous circumstance, a local group of railroaders had imported it to run as a tourist attraction on a branch line, the Keokuk Junction Railway. The floods drowned the tracks and thwarted their plans just as they were about to open.

In this countryside, farmland stitched together by tiny towns, mass transit is an exotic notion indeed. Nonetheless, about 4,000 commuters daily boarded the trolley, which ran every 15 minutes all night and day.

“This must be what it’s like in Chicago or New York,” said Karla Froman, as the 8:15 bumped and clattered during Monday morning rush hour.

It wasn’t. Most of the passengers, for one thing, chatted amiably. The rest stared out the window straight into the churning chocolate waters less than 20 feet below. The trip, just short of a mile, took three minutes, seven seconds.

The conductor was a volunteer and donations were optional.

In heat and storm, passengers have trudged along a steep gravel path to reach the trolley’s east end. On the west side, after wending their way through the hydroelectric plant at the dam, they had a choice: a mile-long walk down the middle of the railroad tracks or a climb up 102 steps.

Twice during its short life, the trolley line ground to a halt in the middle of the dam. Once, lightning struck the line that supplies power from St. Louis to the trolley. Over the weekend, an air brake hose failed.

Each time, the riders got out and took a hike across the dam. Each time, it took less than an hour to put the old car back on track.

“It’s the old pioneer spirit,” said Kathy Bartholomew, a school librarian from Warsaw, Ill.

She took the trolley to her summer classes at Southeast Community College in Keokuk to get her teaching certificate. “I thought this summer would be such a convenient time to do it,” she said, rolling her eyes skyward and shrugging.

In its short life, the trolley line built a loyal clientele that quickly fell into routines.

Jae Powell waved each morning to her husband, Dave, as they passed each other on the Keokuk side. She would be heading to the insurance agency where she is office manager; he would be coming off a night shift as a security guard, heading for Hamilton and home.

Dan Long took to sprinting up the steps, “trying to get rid of this beer gut.”

Teen-age girls met their boyfriends at the trolley each night. Bosses waited in vans to bring their employees the rest of the way to work and dropped them off each evening. Golfers toted clubs to their favorite courses. Shoppers from Illinois took city mini-buses on a new route from the trolley to the Keosippi Mall.

Construction workers at the top of the steps offered rides to the weary. A bank pitched a tent with chairs and free drinks on the Hamilton side. Someone in a private house did the same in Keokuk. “Welcome, trolley riders,” read a hand-lettered sign above the shelter.

Ridership reached a peak from noon Sunday to 8 a.m. Monday, when security guards clicked off 6,023 passengers.

“It scares me to death,” said William D. Vorheis, manager of the Union Electric power plant located at the dam. “Every one of them could fall off. If we get out of this without a lawsuit, I will be very happy.”

But he was happy already. “It’s been very rewarding,” he said.

R.L. Taylor, general manager of the Keokuk Junction Railway, was happy too. His main client, a corn syrup factory, was mostly underwater and now he had the time and opportunity to prove his trolley worked.

Without the trolley, Keokuk “would have been a ghost town,” said Mayor Ronald O. Bramhall. Forty percent of the jobs in this manufacturing center are held by non-residents.

As it was, small businesses on both sides of the river reported their business down by as much as 70% over the last two weeks. “It’s been devastating,” said Hamilton Mayor Ken DeYong.

For weeks the flood waters were too high to repair the bridge. By Saturday, the river had receded two feet and a local contractor was handed the job. Crews worked around the clock in 12-hour shifts to build a new rock-chunk road over the sunken street bed.

Some here wish that the trolley would keep on going even now that its mission is over. “It should stay open,” said Cathy Hagmeier, a convenience store clerk. “The traffic is going to be such a mess.”

Travel Trouble

Because of bridge outages up and down the river, some people in the region were shuttling to and from work by helicopter or plane.

Davenport--Rock Island: Open

Muscatine: Open

Burlington: Open to vehicles weighing less than eight tons

Ft. Madison: Closed Since July 10

Keokuk--Hamilton: Reopened Monday

Quincy: Closed Since Friday night

Hannibal: Closed Since July 7

Louisiana--Pike: Closed Since July 1

Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch