The timetables for Metra's UP West line are tinged in a specific shade of pink known as "Kate Shelley Rose". But who is Kate Shelley? And why does she have a color on a train schedule named after her? The answer is a story with intrigue and heroism that will be told here, starting now.
In 1865, Kate Shelley was born to a pair of tenant farmers toiling away in Ireland. Soon after her birth, the family emigrated to America. Eventually the family settled on a 160-acre plot of land in Boone County, Iowa. Michael Shelley(her father) set about tending the farm and working on a crew for the Chicago & North Western. This arrangement carried on until 1878, when Mike died. At this point, Kate was left to care for her family, as her mother was sickly. In 1881, Shelley was 16 years old and still doing her thing.
On July 6 of that year, a freak storm hit Moingona(where Shelley lived.) All of a sudden, the storms sparked a flash flood that washed out the supports of a railroad bridge spanning the Des Moines River. At that very same moment, a survey locomotive was chugging towards the bridge. Not able to stop in time, the train plunged over the gap. Immediately, Shelley sprang into action, working to rescue the trainmen. The problem soon became much more dire when Shelley remembered that a passenger train(which was affiliated with the Chicago & North Western Railroad) carrying 200 people was soon due to make the very same crossing. So Shelley took off down the track, first having to cross the damaged bridge. After a short while, her lantern failed, and she was forced to make the rest of the half-mile trek with only the lightning for illumination. She soon reached the next depot down the line, at which point she was able to sound the alarm and stop the train in Ogden, short of the failed bridge.
Shelley was soon after hailed as a hero, and given various accolades, including a gold medal, a collection of money from the passengers she saved, and a lifetime pass from the C & NW. The railroad rebuilt the failed span with a steel bridge in 1900, and named it after Shelley, thus making it the first bridge to be named for a woman(and the only one in the country so named until the erection of Philly's Betsy Ross Bridge in 1976.) Nowadays, Metra's UP lines are the descendent of the once mighty Chicago & North Western system, and to pay homage to Ms. Shelley's selfless act, the color on the schedules of the UP West line was changed to a shade of pink dubbed "Kate Shelley Rose"
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