ATALISSA, Iowa (AP) - Steam trains are showstoppers just about anywhere they run.

Now, put two Chinese-built steam locomotives together, string 13 passenger and baggage cars behind them and you can stop an entire town.

The massive locomotives, each with 10 red driving wheels adding a bold splash of color to their jet-black boilers, operated in China until late last year.

They're making their U.S. debut this weekend, heading up excursion trains that are part of RiverWay 2006 - a Quad Cities-area event commemorating the 150th anniversary of the first bridge across the Mississippi River.

It was a bridge that was damaged two weeks after it opened and eventually involved an Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln - yes, that Abraham Lincoln - in legal proceedings.

Bridging Old Man River helped spur further settlement of the West, and railroads played a major role in that expansion. So event organizers felt it was only fitting to give people a chance to ride the rails behind two unique locomotives.

The longest run on Friday took the train from Rock Island, Ill., to Homestead in the Amana Colonies. On the return trip, the train crew treated passengers to a "run-by" in the Muscatine County town of Atalissa, population 311.

Those among the 441 passengers who wanted to watch and photograph the engines in action got off the train, which backed up, then steamed around a curve and roared past where they were standing, belching charcoal-colored smoke as their drivers churned and whistles blared.

"It gave me goose bumps," said passenger Irene Reistroffer of Davenport. "They were going full speed ahead. It was quite exciting."

Evidently, she wasn't the only one who felt that way. It seemed as if the entire town turned out to watch the train, its cars painted in the maroon-and-orange scheme of the old Milwaukee Road, roll through on the former tracks of the fabled Rock Island Line.

It's now the Iowa Interstate Railroad, owned by the Rail Development Corp. of Pittsburgh. At nearly every crossing, even gravel roads that appeared to lead to nowhere, railfans hopped out of their cars to photograph the train.

A caravan of cars chased the train on U.S. 6 between Durant and Wilton. When the train turned around just west of Homestead, at least 200 people watched and took pictures, their parked cars stretching several hundred yards along the highway.

School children lined up along the track to wave at the train in West Liberty. Some photographers clung to bridges to try to get the best shot.

"When people along the way see the train, they realize there actually is a railroad here," said RDC Chairman Henry Posner III, who owns the Chinese locomotives. "A lot of people think you get things from Amazon.com or by plugging into the wall. This train shows there's another way to deliver things."

Posner bought the locomotives, built in the 1980s, after they went off line as part of China's move to diesel engines. He had them shipped through the Panama Canal to Houston, where they were loaded on freight cars for the trip to Iowa.

"Nobody seemed interested in them," Posner said. "I was the only one who raised his hand."

Posner hoped to demonstrate the locomotives' worthiness and ability to generate interest during the RiverWay events so he could sell them, perhaps to a tourist railroad.

They certainly piqued the interest of Dave Vannes, who lives in Madison, Wis. Vannes used to drive steam locomotives, taking the controls of his first one at the age of 15 - before he had a driver's license.

"They announced this in July and I called the next day to buy tickets," said Vannes, who was wearing a Milwaukee Road cap and carrying a scanner so he could listen to the engineer talk on the radio. "I didn't want to know about this and then not be able to ride it."

The first bridge across the Mississippi opened April 21, 1856, and carried trains from Rock Island to Davenport. Two weeks later, on May 6, the steamboat Effie Afton crashed into the bridge, setting one of the spans and the boat ablaze.

Steamboat interests argued in court that the bridge impeded traffic on the river. Lincoln defended the railroad in an 1857 court case that ended with a hung jury, allowing the rail traffic to continue. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled in the railroad's favor.

Replacement bridges were built in 1866, 1872 and 1896. The 1896 bridge, downriver from the original span, still operates as the Arsenal Bridge. Fittingly, the Chinese locomotives pulled the train across the Arsenal Bridge to start the trip to Homestead.

"That was worth the trip itself," said passenger Nick Sirna, a college history teacher from Davenport. "You get views from the train that you don't get while driving."

The four-day event also has featured rides on the Celebration Belle Riverboat, which will work in conjunction with the train on trips to Muscatine on Sunday. Passengers will take the boat one direction and the train the other.

Storytellers have been spinning tales inspired by the railroad, river and local history. There's an Irish Festival in Rock Island on Sunday and the Ghost Bridge will be displayed for the final time Sunday night - a narrated history of the first bridge projected onto a wall of water in the Mississippi.

The event stemmed from the 2004 Grand Excursion that began in the Quad Cities and included boat and steam train rides to celebrate an 1854 trip up the Mississippi.

"We've found that when you bring people to the river and get them involved, they become stewards," said Kathy Wine, executive director of River Action Inc., a nonprofit group that works for protection of the riverfront. "People will protect what they know."