Auto tycoon Charles Nash bought the Kyle train depot in 1962 and moved it to his ranch east of Kyle. He returned the depot to it’s original location on Front and Center Streets in 2003. (Hays Free Press File Photo)
by WES FERGUSON
The Kyle train depot, a local landmark that has fallen into disrepair, could be on track for restoration as early as November.
A preliminary master plan to renovate the 94-year-old structure was unveiled at a Kyle Depot Board meeting on Tuesday evening. The plan aims to return the depot to an approximation of its original state.
It also positions the depot as a welcome center to Kyle, with two museums showcasing the rail-centric history of the town.
“This is a depot. It has character. It has history,” said Kate Johnson, the depot board director. “It will be a wonderful building once it is restored.”
Board members on Tuesday, saying they needed time to look over the master plan, tabled a resolution to forward the document to the City Council, which will ultimately decide whether to approve it.
Project architect Emily Little, of the Austin firm Clayton & Little, estimated the first phase of the project would cost about $230,000. That phase would be funded by a combination of city hotel occupancy tax revenues and grants, including $75,000 from a private foundation overseen by Johnson’s husband.
Work during the first of three phases would include the construction of a new foundation; lowering the building; replacing the leaky roof with a period-accurate metal one; and demolishing a chimney, fireplace and upper level that were not part of the depot’s original layout. Little said that hewing closely to the original layout would give the depot a better chance of landing on the National Register of Historic Places.
“We’re doing everything we can to comply” with the register’s guidelines, she said.
Little estimated the first phase of restoration would take about six weeks. The project must begin no later than December, board members said, or the depot project would forfeit a $25,000 community development grant from the Lower Colorado River Authority.
All told, the early estimate for the five-month project is about $770,000. Subtracting funds already in hand as well as final costs associated with site improvements, board members would need to raise about $360,000 to “get back in the building,” according to Little. Board members on Tuesday discussed fundraising ideas and noted that city staff was helping to write grant applications.
“I’m pretty confident that we can do this,” Johnson said.
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE PLANS
The depot has been sitting at the corner of Center and Front streets since 2003, when the building and its accompanying caboose were donated to the city.
The Kyle Area Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau uses part of the building for its operations. During the construction period, the chamber will have to find a temporary home elsewhere.
“We haven’t nailed down where we’ll be set up,” said Ray Hernandez, the chamber’s executive director.
He said he hopes to find a place on the “front porch of downtown,” near the depot, and that a portable building is also being considered. He and his staff don’t mind waiting while the depot is restored, he added.
“The first concern of ours is to utilize whatever time is needed to ensure the work is done correctly,” Hernandez said.
“The building itself is a treasure and certainly a landmark to our history, our present and in some ways our future as well,” he said later. “It reminds folks that the industry that created Kyle is alive and well.”
According to Little, construction will keep the chamber away from the depot for about four months. When the chamber employees move back in, they will move from the south end of the structure, which faces Center Street, to the old freight room on the north end.
The south end of the building will be returned to its 1917 layout, which included segregated waiting rooms for white and black people. The main waiting room will be used as a visitors’ center. The smaller room where black people were required to wait will be a museum celebrating black history in the area.
The stationmaster’s office will be converted into a railroad museum.
DEPOT ON THE RANCH
This isn’t the Kyle Depot’s first major renovation.
In 1962, Austin auto tycoon Charles Nash purchased the depot for $1,200 and moved it to his ranch east of Kyle. He thought the structure would make a perfect farmhouse, according to his son, Chuck.
“People in Kyle were upset when he bought the depot,” Chuck Nash said. “But all the windows were broken out, all sorts of writing on the walls. It was almost a tear-down situation.”
Instead of tearing down the historic building, Nash restored it and made numerous modifications to it. The railroad company even gave him a red caboose. During summers at the ranch, Nash lived with his wife and daughter in the renovated depot.
The teenage Chuck, meanwhile, slept in the caboose.
“It rocked a little bit when the wind got going,” he said. “It was like you were being pulled by a train going down the tracks.”
Nash told his son that someday he would give the depot back to the city of Kyle, and so he did. The elder Nash died in March 2011 at the age of 87.
