Moments in Time
Last Blast of the Katy Railroad
By: Terri Jo Ryan, Waco Tribune Herald
Forty years ago today,
it was the end of the line for
the "Katy Railroad," the Missouri-Kansas-Texas
Railroad Company's last passenger
train through Waco.
The 99-year-old company that had
brought Midwestern wheat south and sent "Texas
Tea" (oil) north had fallen
onto hard times and dropped the passenger
trade to concentrate its resources on freight.
But for that last historic jaunt of steel
and steam, dozens of people crowded aboard,
including a Waco Times-Herald reporter
named Tommy West who recorded his impressions
for the old evening newspaper's Monday
edition.
July 26, 1964 was a Sunday, and Chris Hansen,
a 24-year-old reporter for the morning
paper, the Waco Tribune, recalled that
he took his then 3-year-old son, Jeff,
to see the last train that day after church
services.
"I would take pictures of my kids with historical
things, like front pages of 'Kennedy shot'
or the moon landing," he
said.
Hansen, who worked for the Trib from 1956-69,
rose to the rank of night city editor before
he left the paper for the photography
department of Baylor. After 35 years, he's
still there in the basement of Pat Neff
Hall, custodian of history rather than
daily chronicler of it.
"My dad worked for the Katy, too.," Hansen
said in a recent interview. "He was a 'carman,'
who inspected the cars when they came through
Bellmead."
David Chiles of Houston, 55, was in Waco
recently with his 90-year-old mother to
visit some family gravesites. Coming into
town, he said, reminded him of his late
uncle Harold Bennett Norsworthy of Sanger
Avenue, who used to take him to see the
trains at the downtown depot.
The old depot then was located where the
Waco Transit and the Greyhound Bus Station
are located now in downtown Waco, in the
300 block of S. 8th street.
"I've been a train buff all my life, ever
since I was 4 or 5 . . . so for 50 years!
I'm not a nut or a moron, just a railroad
buff," he recalled with child-like enthusiasm. "I
was always fascinated by the railroad.
No doubt about it. That red engine and the
stainless steel cars with the red-glass windows;
cars that had been painted from Pullman green
to red. It was something else."
Chiles, an amateur historian of the old
railway, said the Katy was forced to quit
passenger service when it lost a lucrative
contract hauling U.S. Mail to aggressively
low-bids from trucking companies. Within
a year of the last ride through Waco, all
M-K-T passenger service ended when
the last of the Katy's famous trains ran
from Dallas to Kansas City. Like all the
other railroad companies, the Katy became
exclusively freight haulers.
And although an "anemic, asthmatic child" who
didn't get to ride the last Texas Special
out of Waco, Chiles said he recalls the
lore surrounding it. For example, he said,
the engineer was Pomp Perry, 71, a 52-year
veteran of the Katy. When Perry brought
it into the San Antonio, 10 minutes early,
he stepped down from the train and retired
on the spot.
Other historical accounts mention that
one of the last riders was L.L. Langowski,
who had been aboard the first M-K-T train
to arrive at the San Antonio depot on Sept.
1, 1917. He had retired from the Katy four
years earlier after 40 years of service.
A.C. Bedgood, a 33-year Katy veteran, had
the sad task of closing the ticket office.
All Chiles has to remind him now of the
glory days of the old Katy railway are several
photographs taken by his uncle, who died
three
years ago, and his model train cars, pain-stakingly
decorated to resemble the real thing.
"There is no amount of money that would make
me part with them," he said. "It's nostalgia."
-----------
A brief history of the Katy and its most
infamous episode
The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company
(known as M-K-T or "Katy") began its corporate
existence in the days following the Civil
War and
was intended to funnel business from Kansas
City and points north and east to a new
rail route being cut across Indian Territory
and through
Texas. The Katy, touted in advertisements
as the "Gateway to Texas," breached the
Lone Star State's frontier near the site
of present-day
Denison, where the first regular train
arrived on Christmas Day, 1872. The
Katy eventually expanded operations in
Texas and reached Waco in the 1880s.
One of the most infamous publicity stunts
of all time, "The Crash at Crush," took
place about 15 miles north of Waco, featuring
two locomotives of the M-K-T intentionally
set on a head-on collision course on Sept.
15, 1896. Advertised
for months in advance, the event drew more
than 40,000 spectators to a natural amphitheater
three miles south of West formed in a shallow
valley with hills rising on three sides.
Katy Passenger Agent William George Crush,
for whom the event's site was named, had
proposed the spectacle as a way to sell
$2 per
round-trip ticket from anywhere in the
state. A special four-mile track was laid
for the collision run, and telegraph offices
erected and water wells drilled.
Workmen also constructed a grandstand for
officials, speakers' stands, a platform
for reporters and a bandstand. An eatery
was set up in a tent borrowed from Ringling
Brothers circus. A carnival midway sprang
up, with medicine shows, game booths and
cigar stands to entertain the spectators
as they waited for the main event. Some
300 special policemen were brought in to
keep order.
Almost all train wreck fans were put on
a hill at least 200 yards away for what
the Dallas Morning News termed "a
perfect view of the destruction." Only
journalists were allowed to be within 100
yards of the track, for their own safety.
The two engines, one green and one red
and each pulling six cars covered with "gaudy
advertising", slowly
met at the point of collision to be photographed.
Then the trains backed slowly up the low
hills to their starting points. As they
started their run, the two train crews
abandoned their posts and jumped from the
train.
At impact, estimated to be at 50 miles
per hour for each engine, the smashing
of metal and splintering of timber filled
the air. But just as the dust from the
smoking heap started to settle, both boilers
exploded simultaneously and the air was
filled with flying metal missiles "varying
in size from a postage stamp to half of
a driving wheel," the News reported the
next day.
Two people died and at least six other
people were seriously injured by flying
debris, including a Waco photojournalist,
Jarvis Deane, who lost an eye. While the
railway moved in quickly to remove the
larger wreckage, souvenir hunters swarmed
over the site, carrying off most of the
remains despite burning their hands on
the shrapnel. The Katy settled all claims
with cash and life-time passes.
Impresario Crush, a disciple of P.T. Barnum,
was "fired" the evening of the crash, but
rehired the following day. Rumor even had
it he got a bonus for all the attention
he brought the railroad, which curiously
saw a surge in business afterwards. He
worked for the company for 57 years until
his retirement.
The combustion, carnage and carnival atmosphere
of the proceedings were immortalized by
ragtime composer and Texas native Scott
Joplin, in his "Great Crush Collision" march.
Despite the catastrophe of "The Crash at
Crush," the Katy prospered into the first
half of the 20th century.
At one point in 1912, the M-K-T owned more
than 1,600 miles of operated track in Texas.
Passengers luxuriated aboard the Texas Special,
the Bluebonnet, and the Katy Flyer.
In 1931, even in the middle of the Great
Depression, it owned 82 locomotives,
1,000 cars and reported passenger earnings
of $1.7 million, freight earnings of more
than $8 million. Wheat rolled in from Missouri
and Kansas, and oil flowed out of Texas.
But after the boom years of World War II,
a long slide into oblivion began. Cost-cutting
measures, mergers and consolidations took
their toll on the once-prosperous line.
Despite such pruning measures, the Katy's
fortunes continued to decline. In 1967
it reported a net loss of more than $10
million.
Despite a $19 million government guaranteed
loan in 1976 to repair deteriorating track
ties, the railroad's fortunes otherwise
continued to decline. In 1988 the Interstate
Commerce Commission gave Union Pacific
and its subsidiary, the Missouri Pacific
Railroad Company, permission to buy the
Katy. On Dec.
1, 1989, the two companies merged and the
Missouri-Kansas-Texas was no more.
July 26, 2004
Good Katy Links:
The Katy Railroad and the Last Frontier
Back to Moments in Time