MSU Press Author Norman L. Krentel Sparks Love of Trains at the Illinois Railway Museum

By Elizabeth Demers

I had the opportunity to take a behind-the-scenes tour of the Illinois Railway Museum with MSU Press author Norman L. Krentel. Norm is the author of Michigan Railway Company: The Northern and Southern Divisions (Michigan State University Press, 2024). The heavily illustrated book documents Mid-Michigan’s extensive electric interurban rail network, a complex spiderweb of tracks that allowed residents of Lansing, Jackson, Kalamazoo, and Battle Creek to travel easily between their communities during the first third of the twentieth century.

It’s a blustery spring day in April, and the Railway Museum is closed to the public. They are getting ready for their Easter Bunny Trolley Hop, and, when I tour the train barns, I will see bunnies and Easter baskets everywhere. I follow Norm’s directions to a staff entrance and follow a winding drive to the museum’s diner, where I find Norm waiting for me. There are locomotives and railcars everywhere on the expansive property, along with several enormous barns. Norm is a spry septuagenarian who runs several miles a day and can leg press the equivalent of a small Harley-Davidson. He’s down to earth and friendly, and I will shortly discover that he has an impressive, encyclopedic knowledge of electric railcars.

Norm has been a railfan his entire life. As a small child, he was thrilled to hear his father’s tales of riding Lansing’s interurban streetcars when East Lansing was still called Collegeville. As an eighth grader at Walter French Junior High, he talked the Lansing State Journal into opening up their microfilm collection so he could read everything they had in their archives about the interurban rail system, which even then was only a distant memory. When the Krentel family relocated to Chicago, he began volunteering at the Illinois Railway Museum as a teenager—a relationship he has maintained throughout his entire life, at one time serving as the museum’s president.

Norm steers me into one of the huge barns, and I almost gasp in astonishment. When you’re merely waiting behind the crossing gates, it’s easy to forget how big trains are. I felt truly Lilliputian standing next to the enormous engines, freight cars, old CTA train cars, and trolleys that are neatly lined up, tail to snout, coupler to coupler, on the tracks inside. Norm’s passion is clearly electric, and he shows me through some of the highlights of the collection—an interurban car of the type that would have been used by the Michigan Railway Company, a stylish art-deco train from the now defunct North Shore Line, a truly ancient (nineteenth century) horse-drawn streetcar, and the museum’s very first acquisition, Indiana Railroad 65—an interurban car from the 1930s that has been lovingly restored and that the museum sometimes runs for special train events.

While the museum’s collections of rolling stock are truly impressive, the thrills really start for me when Norm brings me into the workshop. This building is where the dedicated volunteers of the Illinois Railway Museum rebuild the old railcars they find around the country and relocate to rural Illinois, at the museum’s expense. Some of these restorers very kindly allowed me to peek in on their projects while they worked. Norm’s current restoration is a Michigan interurban railcar that had been a part of someone’s house—he spied it while driving down a country road in Indiana. It’s banged up, but the bones are good, unlike some old railcars that have been left to rot on the ground, relentlessly exposed to the elements. Just days before my visit to the museum, Norm had been in Ohio, picking up custom-made mahogany windows to replace some of the originals that had rotted out. He showed me a spot on the steel side of the passenger car, where he had cut out and welded a new piece of steel to replace a section devoured by rust. It reminds me of something Edd China might do on Wheeler Dealers. “Were you an engineer in your former life?” I ask. “No,” he replies, “I’ve taught myself how to do all this.” I am in awe. Norm estimates there are about three years of work before the car will be restored to its former glory.

After the tour we get down to the reason I am visiting the nation’s largest railway museum today. Norm is working on the second volume of his Michigan Railway Company history, and I am here so we can talk about his plans for the manuscript. I can’t wait to read it, but, in the meantime, I am already planning my next visit to this amazing museum.

The Illinois Railway Museum is located in Union, Illinois. The Michigan United Railway Company served Mid-Michigan from 1906 to 1924.

To learn more about Norm’s book, Michigan Railway Company, visit: https://msupress.org/9781611864984/michigan-railway-company/