Western Railroad Discussion > Swooshing over the Cottonwood

The Cottonwood River traces an interesting path through east-central Kansas. The river intertwines richly with early AT&SF history. When Uncle ‘Cyrus K’ started his fledgling Santa Fe in 1868 he built south & a bit west from Topeka. Upon reaching Emporia in 1870 he turned west & a bit south, following the Cottonwood River valley to Florence. At Florence the Cottonwood turns sharply to the northwest, toward its headwaters in Marion County. And the Santa Fe continued building west-southwest toward Newton, and ultimately on to the Colorado border.

When the “Ottawa Cutoff” was completed between Waseca Jct (Holliday) west of Argentine & NR Jct in Emporia in 1884(?) the new railroad line again followed the Cottonwood River valley east. The Santa Fe would pass by its confluence with the Neosho River west of Neosho Rapids, KS. This new RR line of course, became the double-track, high density main line now known as the BNSF transcon. When the upgrade to 2 main tracks came about the bridges over both rivers had to be upgraded. Two massive double-track steel bridges were constructed over the Neosho & Cottonwood, with the confluence situated in between. The image below shows a train passing over the Cottonwood through the western-most of the 2 bridges.

1. BNSF 6859 on a westbound unit tanker crossing the Cottonwood River east of the Wiggam crossovers east of Emporia, KS on August 9, 2014.

Thanks for looking!
Lance Garrels
santafe199

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Nice shot, Lance!

Randy Lundgren

Hey Lance, I have a little story about stopping for that bridge once. I was on the 304, KC to Newton. They always put empty Boeing cars on the head end going back to Wichita, and they were almost always "bridge stoppers". We had to stop short of the bridges, and go through on hand signals, because of close clearance. They almost always cleared, but if the car was rocking, it might contact the bridge. There were four of these bridges west of Ottawa, making the 304 a very undesireable ride. I had Ron Pritchard and Maynard Werner on the head end with me, and I had stopped at the bridge in the photo. I released the brakes, and started to stretch the train out to go through the bridge, and before I had moved even a foot, the air went into emergency. Ron walked back to the 2nd car behind the enigne, and found the entire coupler laying on the ground, with the cross key laying right beside it. After a few minutes, he called me on the radio, and asked me if I could help out for a minute. So, and I went back into my old Carman mode. We took the knuckle and guts out of the coupler to lighten it up, and put a short bar through the key slot. Between the three of us, we picked it up, and guided the butt of the coupler back into the center sill. We got it in all the way, and were even able to get the cross key back in too, which is usually the hard part if you don't have a sledge. We couldn't find the cross key retainer, it and it's lock were long gone, and that's why it all came appart. The cross key must have been jiggling it's way further out every time I bunched up the slack, or stretched it out. It finally just fell out on the ground as we came to a complete stop, or when I started pulling.  We couldn't get the cut lever back on, so we left it out, hanging it on a ladder. We stuck the hammer handle in the end hole to hold the key in, wedging it tight by driving our chisel in with it, pounding it down with the knuckle pint. I though it would ride on out to Newton OK the way it was, but Ron wanted to set it out at Emporia, which took longer to do than the temporary fix. Glad it didn't fall out on the road, those things usually do a lot of damage when they go under the first set of trucks.

You got some nice light!!