Railroaders' Nostalgia > Lone Star & other flood detours at Wellington, KS

In early June of 1979 it rained in south central Kansas! It rained some more. And more. It just kept raining. Very quickly all that water had nowhere to go. Except up. And boy, did it ever rise up! The Walnut River down in Butler & Cowley Counties had the task of draining off way more rainwater than it could handle. The resulting flood made headlines. Here is a FEMA report heading from June 1979:

Kansas SEVERE STORMS, FLOODING (DR-588)
Incident period: June 15, 1979
Major Disaster Declaration declared on June 15, 1979

My Santa Fe timebook for the first half of June 1979 (1st ~ 15th) has a couple of really unusual round-trip entries: On June 9 I took a call to go to work @ 4:50 PM on a 305 train from Emporia, KS to our away-from-home terminal of Arkansas City, KS. This was a routine 118 mile run via the Douglas District straight south out of Augusta, KS. Sometimes heavy traffic dictated we take ‘the long way’ around through Mulvane which garnered us an extra 13 miles in the ol’ paycheck. With all the rain we knew about possible high waters down around Douglas & Winfield, KS which was cause for concern, considering all of the bridges & small culverts we would have to cross in the area. The track inspectors were in virtual ‘round-the-clock’ vigilance to keep a close eye on the situation. We had been pretty sure we’d make the extra 13 miles by running through Augusta to Mulvane and down the 3rd District to Winfield. But unbeknownst to us a very unusual twist was in the works!

As we had anticipated the Douglas District was now under water in a few places. But coming into Augusta we were lined into the westbound siding, as if we were waiting for a train coming up the Douglas. We sat there not moving for what seemed like a week-and-a-half! We sat on our immobile train with no information, as if we were super-glued to the rail. We glumly watched four westbound California hotshots fly by us, headed down to Wellington. There was derisive laughter & other select radio jabs from multiple crew members aboard these trains. They all knew we would probably be stuck here long enough to go dead on our hours of service. Static like that from your fellow trainmen just goes with the territory. But the real torture was seeing these trains on the move, while having NO idea what our fate was going be. Apparently the rising waters had put our 3rd District route out of the question.

After a psychological eternity we got a green signal and learned via radio we would now be going to Wellington, because part of the mainline around Winfield was now nearly under water. I believe all other Arkansas City-bound trains were now being held at Emporia, or points further east. So onward we ran down to Wellington, and yarded our train with the head end stopped right in front of the yard office. Since we had tied up at 11:05 PM at Wellington we went into the normal first in-first out pool rotation there. It seemed a lot longer, but we had only worked 6’ 15” coming down. That meant we could go back home on a 4 hour-release, with 5’ 45” left to work. But we would need a good train…

We went to bed that night at our lodging knowing we had a real good shot at going to work ahead of the 4 train crews that had clipped us at Mulvane with such laconic radio abuse. We were almost giddy with delightful anticipation. And all of those already-sleeping beauties were clueless! Stick around, this is gonna be fun…

1. It’s not much of a picture, but this IS that flood-detoured, Texas-bound train 305 I-1 sitting in Wellington (KS) Yard. I had no tripod, but I found a low, flat railing to hand-clamp my camera down for a couple of 30 second K-64 exposures. The Santa Fe mainline here -later called the transcon- normally handles only Texas Panhandle/New Mexico/Arizona & West Coast traffic. Before this train would leave Wellington Santa Fe would have to taxi a regular Middle Division Ark City-Purcell crew over from Arkansas City. They would board the 305 with a Plains Division pilot that would help them find their way down the H&S District (branch line) from Wellington to Blackwell, OK. From Blackwell it was a short jog over the Ponca City District back to their own mainline at Ponca…
(Photo date: June 9, 1979.)



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/16 15:06 by santafe199.

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The very next morning, June 10, my crew went back on duty at 6:50 AM for =you guessed it= a very hot 981 G-1. We had only 2 units: 8761 & 8032, but we also had only about 1800 tons. IIRC they yarded & held a of couple of lower priority, junk manifest trains so they could put us on that 981. With 2 more heavy manifests on the distant heels of our 981 we now had a situation where we had been bullet-ridden with nasty radios barbs the night before, but we were now stealing a hotshot out from underneath ALL of those yay-hoos the next morning. Mercy sakes! Out of the 20 Emporia-bound crewmen in the Wellington yard office that morning were FOUR very happy campers! There were also 16 sour-puss faces…

This story should end right here with our crew triumphantly blasting off, blazing a trail into an early morning Kansas sunrise! Not-so-fast: What we DIDN’T know the night before is that a detouring passenger train would help us greatly in our mission to regain our crew-status & pecking order dignity. The now amphibious conditions all over the Douglas & 3rd Districts had made them impassable. So in an extremely rare circumstance Santa Fe was forced to detour my favorite Amtrak train down through Wellington, following the same piloted trail my 305 took the night before. Before we could take our glorious 981 chariot home Santa Fe had to get Amtrak’s “Lone Star” to Wellington to pick up a fresh passenger crew & a Plains Division pilot. The train would crawl a few city blocks west on the main line and make that same left turn down the H&S District our 305 had taken the night before. THEN the 981 would roll into town for us. Of course, out came my camera:

2. “Extra-AMTK 502 west” is stopped at the main line yard office with a detouring train #15, the “Lone Star”.

3. A freight crew bystander watches a couple of passenger “suits” walking unsteadily toward the yard office over the large & rough ballast which is not very compatible with hard soled, shiny dress shoes…

4. The inbound passenger crewmen find their way inside the normally freight crew-only yard office, They will be transported over to Arkansas City, KS to get their. Bu at this point it is unknown where they will catch train #16 back to Kansas City later tonight. It could be right back here at Wellington (I never did find out).
(3 photos taken June 10, 1979)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/16 15:00 by santafe199.

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On June 11 I took at call out of Emporia for another Texas-bound train, the 325 K-1. For the second trip in a row we were sent to Wellington. But this time we turned away from the Middle Division 4th District mainline just short of old “SK Jct” at the east edge of Wellington Yard. We went around the east leg of the WYE there and proceeded east over the Eastern Division 4th District to Winfield to get back onto our normal routing. I was the rear end brakeman this trip, and was treated to an interesting once-in-a-career ride. It was my first, last & only time over this piece of Santa Fe branch line trackage. Inexcusably, I never took the camera out of my grip. There were no depots left to shoot, but there were a couple of signboards here & there, plus some old elevators I could have shot. In today’s streamlined corporate world most of this line between Wellington & Winfield has been torn out. Sigh…

5. Here’s a copy slide made from (I think) a color print shot by Wellington native, good friend & future Santa Fe brakeman Keel Middleton. Keel is now a BNSF engineer out of Wellington, approaching retirement. It is the Oxford, KS depot on the Eastern Division 4th District. I believe this depot still lives, having been moved to another location. Oxford was on the short stretch between Wellington & Winfield.
(Photo date: October 20, 1973)

Thanks for listening!
Lance Garrels
santafe199



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/16 17:06 by santafe199.

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Looks like a couple of "Indian" series sleepers in that train :)

That brings back a few good memories Lance. I was a fairly new Fireman back then, normally working the Emporia West freight pool, but being the low rested man in town, I got jumped up (or down ?) for this #15, working with Sweed Cornealson. In Photo #2, I can barely make Sweed, and myself, at the extreme right next to the pole. We departed Emporia at 4:02am, and arrrived at Wellington at 6:45, that's why the photos look dark, it was barely day break. Oh, and the other unit was the 519. Anyway, they vanned the whole crew over to Ark City for rest, and on the way, I got aquainted with Craig Hudson. He was the flagman (If I remember right) and we were friends right up until his death last year. We came out of Ark City later that night at 10:05pm, with a message reading "Stop at 9th st Winfield, and Trainmaster will meet you with orders to operate on the SK, Wn Jct-SK Jct." .We pulled up to the crossing, the TM crawled up the ladder and gave us our running orders. He ask Sweed if he wanted him to ride across with us, but Sweed had been over it before, and told him to go back home and go to bed, which he did. When we got to SK (Wellington) the switch crew had the wye all lined up for us, we had permission to enter the south track, and off we went back to Emporia.

ddg Wrote: > ...In photo #2, I can barely make Swede, and myself, at the extreme right...

More proof that "it's a small world". Knowing this was an extraordinary event I had a slight notion to get more close-up shots of the crew & people milling around. But I was just over a year into my RR career and was still a bit cautious about flashing my camera around. Not to mention I still didn't know a lot of the guys I was working with. Believe it or not, I've always been pretty shy until I get to know someone, or in this case: "a LOT of someones..." And you're right-on about the daybreak thing. I'm lucky the slide exposures came out as good as they did...

Lance/199

Old Santa Fe Ry. Arkansas City based operating crews on the early Amtrak train 15/16 worked  to and from Purcell, OK at the time, the middle three shots  were taken in 1979.

Lance, the two uniformed trainmen going into the yard office look like Craig Hudson for sure with the longer blondish hair, and I think the one behind him is Roger Hull. Roger worked passenger quite a bit when he could, and he was Deadheading to KC on #4 when it turned over on the 30 mph curve at Lawrence, KS. in '79. MInor injuries if any, one of the lucky ones.