Dave Kloke, a building contractor and major fan of Abraham Lincoln, needed an 1860s locomotive to re-enact Lincoln’s funeral train. He couldn’t find one so he and a band of volunteers built one from scratch. They did much of the work in a warehouse in Elgin, Illinois, using old plans and wooden foundry patterns borrowed from the National Park Service. The locomotive was completed a few years back and the group is now working on a replica of the funeral car. If all goes according to plan, in 2015 the locomotive and funeral car will travel from Washington, DC to Springfield, Illinois to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s death. The videos below include interviews of Kloke, the story of the project, and some clips of the fabrication—which of course, include tools.
