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The Whistle Stop Hobby Shop

HIDDEN OFF MAIN STREET behind the grain elevator is the old train station. It was never much to look at, and when passenger trains quit running through Willow Mills before the war, it was abandoned and stayed empty for several years.

After Charles Allred retired in the 80s, he got to playing with an old hobby: electric trains. He dug out parts of a train set he had when his daughter was little and began rebuilding the parts the cat had defiled, replacing grass, trees, switches, and little people.

A popular hobby around this part of Indiana is going to auction sales. Chuck discovered that local auctions were a great place to get more electric train parts, and soon he had an elaborate system that filled the guest room in his house. Audrey put her foot down, though, when he mentioned knocking out a wall between the guest room and his daughter’s old room, so Chuck went hunting for another place to house his hobby. And there it was: the old Willow Mills Train Station.

The train station comprised a ticket office, waiting room, and baggage room. The freight platform was used until 1965 when all operations were transferred over to the grain elevator. The building was available according to the folks at the elevator, and they’d lease it to Chuck for a moderate amount.

Chuck went to work. He soon discovered that it wasn’t enough to clean the cobwebs out of the place. There were some pretty serious repairs to be made. But it was structurally sound, and with the same loving care that he put into his models, he restored the old station to its former glory. (Some of the old timers here say the station never looked that good when it was a train station.)

The place is open now as the Whistle Stop Hobby Shop. At last count, Chuck had eight different tracks running with everything from HO to Lionel 0.27 gauge. And since he still haunts auctions all around the northern part of the state, he brings the train equipment in, repairs and restores it, then sells it from behind the old ticket window.

Don’t miss the Whistle Stop at Christmas time when Chuck decorates the whole shop. It has become a favorite stop for the kids who all refer to him as “Uncle Chuck.”

Masterson’s Woollen and Dry Goods

AUDREY THOMPSON (cousin of Everett and Wayne, I believe) visited Willow Mills in August for the first time. Her grandmother had told her stories, however, and Audrey asked this question: “Did you know about Old Sylvia Masterson's Woollen & Dry Goods store that used to be on Buckeye Lane, just off of Main Street? The library might have some old photos of it. Or check the town hall records. Far as I recall, she had quite the reputation for quality imports from Boston.”

Well, that was a new one for me and I had to do some research. Not only had I never heard of Sylvia Masterson, I didn’t know Buckeye Lane. So, here’s what I found out.

Sylvia, it seems, came to Willow Mills with the railroad in 1892. She was one of the many passengers headed west to start a new life. She was headed for Chicago according to an old Pacific Northern manifest. But it turned out that there was a mix-up in Cleveland and Sylvia changed trains along with all the merchandise she was transporting to start a dry-goods shop on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. The train she switched to was headed southwest to St. Louis.

The error went undetected until the train had pulled out of Fort Wayne. For the next hour or so, she frantically argued and pled with the conductor who insisted that she had intentionally stowed away on his train and owed $14 fare. The upshot was that Sylvia, eighteen bolts of fine wool, a trunk full of lace, ribbons, and notions, and her two suitcases of clothes were all put off the train at the next stop—Willow Mills, Indiana. There on the platform she sat, not knowing where she was or what she would do.

Enter the tall dark stranger.

The term is relative in this case as it was actually a short little dumpling of a man named Aldous Oppenheimer, the first druggist of that name to occupy the corner of Main and Wabash Streets.

Aldous was there to receive a shipment of various things for his drugstore and found Miss Masterson sitting beside his consignment. After listening to her tale of woe, blubbered through hot, angry tears, Aldous had his man load her things onto the buckboard and cart them all over to his shop. There, Aldous turned Miss Masterson over to his capable wife Louise.

Various alternatives were investigated, but in the long-run, Aldous was convinced to let out the back room of the drugstore to Miss Masterson for a dry goods shop (on a temporary basis, of course). The back room had a connecting entrance from the drugstore, but also had its own private entrance off the alley that runs parallel to Main Street. In those days, the alleys were as much used as the streets, and although she never had a shingle or a beautiful storefront window, Sylvia found that she did have a thriving business in Willow Mills, and she stayed.

The alley (as you have probably guessed) was called Buckeye Lane, a name that has long been forgotten in the modern town of Willow Mills.

In 1910, Louise passed away. A year later, to no one’s surprise, Sylvia and Aldous were married. The dry goods shop was amalgamated into the drugstore and a couple of years later the whole thing was turned over to Aldous’s son Samuel. Sylvia and Aldous retired and moved to Chicago fulfilling Sylvia’s twenty-five-year-old dream. Aldous died in 1919 and was returned to Willow Mills for burial beside Louise in the Old Lutheran Cemetery. I was unable to track Sylvia any further. To my knowledge she never returned to Willow Mills.

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