Western Railroad Discussion > Waitin' 44 years to meet the boys for supper

Truth be known, it was actually about 44 minutes before I had to meet the boys over at the Riverside Café over on W 13th St. Every 3rd Friday of the month some of the local NRHS members meet there around 5:30 PM for an informal evening meal & railfan conversation. (=GREAT food, by the way!=) This supper time get-together is in advance of the regular monthly Wichita Chapter NRHS meeting.

At about a quarter-to-five I was killing some time around north Wichita, exploring the old RR yards & industrial areas for photo opportunities. When I spotted a green eastbound signal at the BNSF 21st St crossing I drove up Broadway to 25th St to get a few shots. The old AT&SF North Wichita Yard office building at 25th St was a 24/7/365 beehive of activity back in the good old days. On any given Friday afternoon there would be a half-dozen, sometimes many more personal vehicles parked at the two-story flat-roofed building ( http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2918885,2918885#msg-2918885 ). This usually included any & all on-duty yard service personnel, the yardmaster & crew clerk and whomever else happened to be hanging around.

Word is today there is barely enough local RR traffic to justify keeping the old yard office building erect. Broadway is one of the main traffic arteries through greater Wichita. I first saw this part of Wichita on a summer night in 1973, while brazenly cruising around with a couple of fellow teen-aged friends. From 44 years ago I can still remember the Mexican pubs & cafes along the west side of Broadway. I remember looking across Broadway and seeing the night time lighting at the meat packing plant (Swift? Armour?). I remember seeing a pair of dark blue Santa Fe geeps rolling by with a short string of boxcars. But most of all I remember those massive black iron signal bridges sporting those ubiquitous searchlight signals. My baptism into actual railfanning education was still 2-3 years in the future, so I didn’t really relate to this as a Santa Fe mainline. But I surely DO remember those searchlights!

Today it’s predictably different. The area around Broadway & 21st has become a bit cluttered with new technology: power lines & cell phone towers. As well as faded glory: most of those quaint Mexican pubs & cafes are boarded up, or have become other miscellaneous businesses. The Blue & Yellow 1st generation geeps & string of 40 ft boxcars have replaced with pumpkin-colored, computer-chipped engines 3 times as powerful hauling portable metal containers stacked one atop another. And sadly, the black iron searchlight signal bridges have been replaced with antiseptic aluminum tricolor-light signal bridges…

1. BNSF 8067 leads a long eastbound (north as the crow flies) stacker along parallel Broadway St. Lots of hardware to look at here! Red signals a-plenty. Street lights & power lines. Also prominent are the rush hour vehicles on Broadway with the distant downtown skyline as a backdrop.

2. The 8067 has passed the old Santa Fe yard office (out of frame to the right) and is approaching the infamous 29th St crossing, which slices North Wichita Yard cleanly in half. Today the yard is a near complete ghost town. But when the yard was fully active this crossing presented endless headaches for Santa Fe switching & main line local train operations, not to mention the several hundreds of drivers wanting to cross it on a daily basis. 29th St was known to Santa Fe personnel as ‘The Walk’. Most of the yard tracks had underground train air brake hoses with above-ground glad-hand connections so an air-test could be performed while 29th St was physically cut to clear for vehicle traffic. Typical radio chatter from a by-gone era: “Santa Fe Wichita Yard to (eastbound local #) 1412, make your set in 3 track. Shove those 14 cars south of the Walk and tie ‘em down. Your pick-up is ready to go on 2 track north of the Walk.” Today this re-routed stacker is just rolling right on through…

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And then the sun came out! For only a minute or two…

3. BNSF DP unit 8273 fades away as the BNSF 2178 basks in brief sunshine. A solitary crew van waits quietly for something to do.
(3 photos taken at the 25th St crossing in North Wichita, KS on January 20, 2017)

Thanks for looking!
Lance Garrels
santafe199

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"...the infamous 29th St crossing, which slices North Wichita Yard cleanly in half."

Sometime back in the late 80s, maybe '87 or so, the Santa Fe put a grain train on the ground at North Wichita, including a couple of cars out into the street at 29th and Broadway. 

WichitaJct Wrote: > ... maybe '87 or so ...
I sorta remember that derailment, but not any specific details. I'll bet city traffic was an absolute mess, though! 

In June of 1978 I spent the first 11 days of my Santa Fe service at Wichita, before I was able to come up and work the brakeman's extra board out of Emporia. In those 11 days, and in all the subsequent times I ever worked the Wichita extra board I heard many hair-raising crossing incident stories from around town, most of them centered around 29th St, or "The Walk". I also heard a circus-train load of ROTF funny stories. I wish I had scribbled down some notes so those wild stories could have been kept, just for both the incredible and the sheer comical content...

Lance/199

Two places in Wichita where dealing with railroad verses traffic was a mess.  29th street north, Lance talked about and at South Junction.  Most of the issues were switching at night.  I remember two incidents, one at 29th street north at night when someone went around the gates while we were making a shove anf the foreman was yelling at the driver as they went by and took his nice company issue metal lantern and hit the roof of the car, the driver did not stop and debate what was happening.

Switching at South Junction we had a road crossing protected by flashers and gates.  One summer night a driver in an old lincoln went around the gates, had the windows down while we were making a move and the foreman yelled and tossed a lighted fusee in the passenger side.  The guy went about a block before he stopped and threw the fusee out of the car.  He did not come back and debate either.  Working nights is always interesting...

Sounds like Harobor Island in south Seattle was related to me that the fellow in the caboose got mad at a motorist cussing and jumped off ran over and took care of the problem. They did switching there across a many lane city street.

jtwlunch Wrote:
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> Two places in Wichita where dealing with railroad verses traffic was a mess.  29th street north,
> Lance talked about and at South Junction.  Most of the issues were switching at night.  I
> remember two incidents, one at 29th street north at night when someone went around the gates while
> we were making a shove anf the foreman was yelling at the driver as they went by and took his nice
> company issue metal lantern and hit the roof of the car, the driver did not stop and debate what
> was happening.
>
> Switching at South Junction we had a road crossing protected by flashers and gates.  One summer
> night a driver in an old lincoln went around the gates, had the windows down while we were making a
> move and the foreman yelled and tossed a lighted fusee in the passenger side.  The guy went about
> a block before he stopped and threw the fusee out of the car.  He did not come back and debate
> either.  Working nights is always interesting...

I recall on night where the crew switching Boeing (south of town) made the news. K-15 crossing, which had just crossbucks, and a car almost hit the brakeman who was dropping fusee's to protect the movement. Driver didn't even slow down (God forbid he be inconvenienced). But he left carrying a fusee stabbed into the sheet metal side of his car. There is a reason for the metal spike on one end of a fusee!

Fred in Wichita