| travel |
On a
CHAPEL CAR GRACE
words & photography by Kay & David Scott
From Navajo hogans in northern Arizona to St . Peter ’ s Basilica in the Vatican , the world is home to a wide range of places of worship . We once drove by a tiny roadside chapel near Austin , Minnesota , in which it would have been difficult to shoehorn more than a dozen worshippers . In Europe we strolled through huge cathedrals that could welcome thousands . During decades of travel we thought we had seen just about every type of worship facility . Then we visited Green Lake , Wisconsin .
Green Lake is a small community in Central Wisconsin where part- and full-time residents enjoy a quiet lifestyle near the state ’ s deepest natural inland lake . Winter months can be brutal , but summer days are heaven to those of us who live in the South . It was in Green Lake we stumbled across an unusual type of church : a railway carriage called a “ chapel car ” designed for worship on the rails .
Getting the Gospel on Track
Inspiration for the first American chapel car is generally credited to Episcopal Bishop William David Walker of North Dakota . During a late- 1880s trip to Russia , Bishop Walker came across three connected train cars used for worship on the Siberian Railroad . The cars carried printed materials and sacraments to the thousands of people in sparsely populated Siberia . Instead of bringing people to the church , the chapel cars brought a church to the people .
Upon returning to the states Bishop Walker contracted with the Pullman Palace Car Company to build a train car that included a meeting room plus small areas for cooking and sleeping . Church of the Advent : Cathedral Car of North Dakota , was completed in November of 1890 at which time it began being used in mission work for North Dakota railroad employees . The service was discontinued after a year when Bishop Walker moved out of state .
Following completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10 , 1869 , the trickle of people moving west became a mass migration as easterners and immigrants sought a better life in the West . The migration resulted in new towns springing up along the tracks . Many , if not most , were populated with numerous saloons but few churches .
30 TiftonScene | JULY 2022