The Belton, Grandview and Kansas City Railroad is a project of the Smoky Hill Railway and Historical Society, Inc. an IRS 501(c)3 organization.
Smoky Hill was formed in 1964 to help preserve the railroad history of Kansas City and the Midwest in Lenexa Kansas. In the early 1970's the organization moved to the River Quay area of North downtown Kansas City to a part of what had been the Kansas City Southern Railway's (KCS) 3rd Street Yard. Using the name Kansas City Railroad Museum, the group ran a museum with static displays, a gift shop and rented out use of the railcars for special events. At least two of those cars were used at the 1976 Republican Convention by a news outlet for their Hospitality suite.
The end of the 1970's found the River North area of Kansas City embroiled in organized crime issues, and with an upswing in traffic, the KCS wanted use of all the track in the 3rd Street Yard, so Smoky Hill was forced to move out. The equipment was dispersed to a number of locations on both sides of the state line, but the majority of the equipment was relocated to the fuel tracks at the just closed (from active duty) Richards-Gebauer Air Force Base. During the 1980's most public contact was made during the Air Force Base Open House, "Operation Handshake" Air Show. Another large group of equipment was located on sidings at Dodson (generally 85th Street and Prospect).
During the final months of 1989 talks with the Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) were started on the possibility of purchasing the BN Clinton Branch. The line originally had run from Kansas City to Springfield, MO. But as the BN predecessor St. Louis - San Francisco Railroad (Frisco) had expanded, the original line was first supplanted by a parallel competitor that was frequently a stone's throw away and never more than 10 miles apart, then a higher speed line was build to more modern standards in Kansas to Springfield relegating the original Kansas City to Springfield line to secondary status. The line was severed just South of Clinton and at Osceola in early 1979 as the US Army Corps of Engineers Truman Reservoir started filling. As time went on first the Frisco then BN trimmed the line back to the North to East Lynne, MO and to the South to Buffalo, MO. The line was purchased by Smoky Hill in the summer of 1990 and the first special excursion run that fall. The terms of the purchase trimmed the line back further from East Lynne to South of Belton, to finance the project through the sale of the scrap material.
The first regular trains were run in Belton in 1991, and we have been here since.