On Thursday, May 29 city workers helped the Tutterrows install the train so that all of Cuba could see their artistry and share in Cuba’s history at the small, corner lot green space that has a story of its own.

Viva Cuba member Marge Fleming approached the Tutterrows about building the train after the group saw the elk that the Tutterrows sculpted in front of their taxidermy business, Wildlife Unlimited. Viva Cuba members thought that the train was an appropriate addition to the garden, since Cuba was originally platted around the railroad and owes its growth to the development of the rail system, as well as Route 66 and the interstate highway.  

 

The train that the Tutterrows based their sculpture on ran between Salem and Cuba and was planned as a St. Louis to Salem to Little Rock, Arkansas, line, but financial problems kept the line from going on to Arkansas.

The train had two objectives in its operation. First, people from small towns such as Sligo, Midland, Cook Station, and Viburnum could travel to Cuba, where they could transfer to the main line and on to bigger cities if they wanted. Second, ore from outlying mines could be shipped to Cuba and beyond, and supplies could reach the small towns via the railroad.

Before the Tutterrows built the train, they first built a wooden wall at the same scale as the brick wall in the garden, so that they could build the train with the proper perspective, which was their biggest challenge.

Glen Tutterrow explained how he wanted the train to present a sense of movement. “We wanted it to feel as if it was moving in space,” he told Three Rivers Publishing. “The perspective along the curved wall makes it seem as if it’s coming around a bend. Our goal was to give it a different perspective depending upon where you were viewing it from, so that if you made the turn at Highway 19, the train would move with you. It makes the sculpture feel more alive.”

The Tutterrows built the train in three pieces of 18-gauge steel and painted it black with automotive paint. During installation at the Viva Cuba Garden while an audience of Viva Cuba members, the press, and passersby watched, the Tutterrows welded the three pieces of steel together so that the Salem to Cuba branch of the railroad could take its place in permanent posterity. It is 15 feet long and weighs between 300-350 pounds.

Because Glen Tutterrow felt satisfaction from the actual building of the train, he reported a sense of letdown when it was finished. “A sad feeling came over me when it was done because it was finished. I had a sense of accomplishment, but sadness that I wasn’t working on it anymore,” he stated.

With the addition of the train, Viva Cuba completes a two year landscaping and redesign of the Viva Cuba Garden.