A bunch of railroad enthusiasts, joined by scholars of the "Golden Age of Railroading" and volunteers who think they can are hoping to get to the point where they thought they could.

Between a fundraising engine and a grant-bestowing caboose, however, there is a half-million dollar gap, a benefactor with an eye for unique architecture (even on wheels), and the nation's oldest rolling railroad fish tank.

The Mid-Continent Railway Historical Museum/Society at North Freedom has three weeks to match a $475,000 restoration grant offer, an effort that was daunting enough without suddenly facing a full summer closed because of flooding unleashed on the unique museum.

The amazing part is not that an out-of-the-way specialty museum — dealing in steam locomotives and a collection of 100-year-old railroad cars — thinks it has a chance to raise $475,000.

It is that they are only $70,000 short of reaching that goal.

Don Meyer, manager and one of six staffers at the sprawling museum "yard" in North Freedom, a few miles west of Baraboo, said dealing with a massive cleanup from the flood while trying to meet the end of July deadline has made this a summer of pressure.

The damage, said Meyer, was immense, probably more than $3 million worth, and the museum remains closed.

Volunteers have mustered from all quarters, and hundreds of assignments, many focused on technical repairs of soaked equipment, are being doled out.

"Every building, every piece of equipment took on some water," Meyer wrote in his flood blog.

The last of its kind

The time needed to dry up the floodwaters and make repairs is eating up the chance to meet the most important fundraising deadline in the museum's 40-year history.

In August 2006, the Jeffris Family Foundation of Janesville — known for its financial support of restoration of some of Wisconsin's finest and most threatened architecture — announced it would give the railroaders $475,000 if the society could match that sum within two years.

The target was the restoration of a nearly 100-year-old fish-stocking car, the last of its kind, known as the "Badger No. 2." Built for $13,500 by the Pullman Co. of Illinois for the Wisconsin Fisheries Commission, the car is 72 feet long and was delivered in 1912 with wooden cabinets to keep fish cans — they looked like milk cans — cold, and room for a crew of four, including a kitchen, salon and observation room. The car was used to deliver live fish for stocking Wisconsin's lakes and waterways.

Little of the original car remained when the museum acquired it in 1960. Though it was known as "The Fish Car," it had not "worked" as a fish car since 1945. Seats were installed, and it was used to haul passengers.

What eventually convinced Tom Jeffris to dangle some of his foundation's money as a lure for fish car donations was the work of the museum's archivist and collections manager, Leah Rosenow. Her exhausting search for the provenance of the last fish-hauling railroad car proved it is, literally, the last one.

"Jeffris made it quite clear he likes unique projects, and he also likes projects in out-of-the-way areas, standalone projects where the foundation is a significant player in an architectural challenge," said Meyer.

The Fish Car fit those criteria, as architecture on wheels.

All-or-nothing situation

All that culminated in the fundraising effort that started two years ago.

"It's a challenge grant, and we have to match it in an all-or-nothing situation," said Meyer.

The grant "puts you on the spot to get out there and raise money and also makes you use the opportunity to increase your donors because it makes it very attractive when you say your money gets doubled," said Meyer.

"We've been able to do that with several new donors, but right now we have exhausted all of our relationships with people who already knew about us and we are down to cold calls. We need $70,000 in 20 days," he said.

While the pool of railroad enthusiasts has been tapped, there have been and may be more potential donors among fishing and outdoors groups, said Meyer. The state Department of Natural Resources, the bureaucratic descendant of the Fisheries Commission, has been a promotional partner in the fundraising, an effort that has been intentionally low key, Meyer noted.

"We had early success and now we are so close. It was hard enough, and then the flood hit," Meyer said.

"The car's restoration will be total, from fish tank to salon," said Meyer.

"Mr. Jeffris was very adamant that this be fully functional and look the same way it looked when it pulled out of the Pullman shop," said Meyer.

One original item its original iced wooden cabinets won't hold is fish, or water.

The potential for harm is too great, said Meyer, adding that the museum has seen its fill of water-related damage to its collection.