More than 40 years ago, a Kankakee grade-schooler brought his teacher a railroad lantern without its glass globe — something that re-ignited a passion first kindled for mathematics teacher Clayton Rattin when he was a schoolboy himself at Wichert.
The love of all things railroad.
At Wichert, decades ago, the schoolhouse was just a bit west of the local asparagus cannery and the railroad siding that served it. "I'd go down to the railroad at recess and watch the steam engines back cars in the siding," Rattin recalled of his first railroad thrills. "Of course, I had to run back after lunch."
When his student brought him the incomplete railroad lantern in 1969, Rattin contacted collector Gil Irps, of Aroma Park, who said he didn't have the globe required to restore the Wabash RR lantern, but that half a dozen collectors were planning a sale in his yard and might have one.
