Steam & Excursion > Oregon 1889, the story behind an old photograph.

19th century railroad photographs taken in Oregon are rare, relative to the decades that followed.  The same images appear again and again in books and museum collections, accompanied by fragmental, sometimes contradictory information.  A good example is the picture below of a Oregon & California Railroad locomotive on its side, taken at Albany Jct., July 29th 1889.  A mishap occurred, but what were the circumstances?  Gathering contemporary newspaper accounts, I was able to piece together what happened.  It was a major story at the time.

The afternoon of Sunday July 28 1889, train #16, the California Express, was preparing to depart East Portland. Despite the completion of the (original) Steel Bridge the previous year, passenger trains on the Southern Pacific controlled Oregon and California Railroad's mainline departed on the east side of the river.  The passengers gathered at the railroad’s former headquarters, a triangular shaped building at the intersection of Front, First and F streets, then boarded a ferry to cross the Willamette.  Upon reaching the opposite shore they walked the short distance to the depot and boarded the train.  (Today, the site of the station is where Interstate 5 crosses Union Pacific’s Brooklyn Subdivision, some 400 feet south of the current Steel Bridge).

The California Express and its counterpart, The Oregon Express, were inaugurated two years before.  They were the premier trains on the road, offering a 39-hour schedule to and from San Francisco. Summer brought heavy loadings.  Earlier that month the Morning Oregonian reported that the train carried 233 through passengers and large amount of local traffic.  The California Express tended to be so heavy it sometimes stalled.  “The engines used are rarely equal to the work, and occasionally the heavy grade at Aurora requires that the train backs for over a mile to get it started again”.

John William “Big Jack” Miller, was the train’s engineer.  He was 46, a well-liked and respected nineteen-year veteran on the road. Eustace Quinton “Quint” Guthrie, 27, was fireman.  Their locomotive, Oregon and California #23, was a wood-burning 4-4-0 built by Baldwin in 1883. While coal and oil-fired locomotives were making inroads elsewhere, in Oregon wood continued to be a significant fuel source beyond the turn of the century.   The Baldwin was one of seven 4-4-0s ordered when construction of the railroad resumed south from Roseburg after a decade long pause.  In the six years six years that followed, the line was completed across Oregon and had passed into Southern Pacific control. 

The train departed East Portland one hour late at 5pm.  Conductor Wesley S. Conser's heavy complement of passengers increased at each stop down the Wilamette Valley.  Among them were State Senator J.W. Norval of LaGrande, State Swamp and Land Commissioner Roe and Sheriff Hamilton of Union County, all bound for Roseburg.  Also on board were four tramps hiding in the front baggage car. 

The California Express was scheduled to arrive in Albany at 8:18. The normal procedure was to release the local to Lebanon immediately after its departure, but due to the delay in East Portland, it was sent out early.  The local proceeded one mile to Albany Jct. and entered the branch to Lebanon.  The Express arrived at Albany at 8:55 and departed at 9:15. In less than five minutes it was at Albany Jct., travelling at the speed of twenty-five miles per hour.

As the train approached the junction switch, Engineer Miller noticed the switch points were ajar.  He set the airbrakes and threw the train into reverse.  The locomotive hit the switch and left the rails, continuing on the ties for one hundred feet before falling down an embankment and onto its side.  Miller and Guthrie were badly scalded then immersed in cold water flooding from the tender.  The baggage car went completely off track but remained upright, injuring one of the four tramps on board.  The first Pullman also left the rails resulting in no serious injuries but “considerable screaming”.  
       
Rescuers dug through wood spilled from the tender to reach the locomotive’s crushed cab to access the gravely injured crew.  As Miller was pulled out, he was heard to say “No, leave me alone, I can get out with any help.”  The men were taken to Albany and put on the next Oregon Express to Portland, where both died of their injuries.

The next morning it was determined that the switch had been tampered with during the interval between the local and express trains.  The same day, W.A. Hill, an itinerant laborer, late of Astoria, confessed to a doctor, ostensibly under the influence of morphine for a hurt arm.  Hill had been working nearby fields the previous day driving a traction engine in a thresh crew with brothers Frank and Herbert Rolf.  That evening, the three were “partially intoxicated”.  Hill said the younger Rolf brother placed a rock between the rails of the switch, unscrewed a bolt and removed the switch bar.  The Albany Democrat opined that “The Rolf boys are not very bright and are said to be of an ugly disposition.  The noose hangs over them”.

Jack Miller’s quick actions, and the fact he and Quint Guthrie stuck with the locomotive when they could have jumped, elevated them to hero status.  In Portland, Guthrie’s funeral was well attended, after which he was buried at Riverview Cemetery.  For Miller, a special train, its locomotive draped in black, was dispatched from East Portland to take his remains to Muddy station between Halsey and Harrisburg.  Ninety people, including Miller’s wife, were on board.  Wesley S. Conser, who had worked on the wrecked California Express, was conductor. More boarded the special as it proceeded down the Willamette Valley.  A second train departed northbound from Junction.  Over 300 people attended the ceremony at Muddy station.  Upon return, the Portland train paused ten minutes at the site of the wreck.  Jack Miller was buried at the IOOF cemetery in Harrisburg. 

In November the two Rolf brothers were acquitted while W.A. Hill, who offered the initial confession, was convicted and sentenced to prison.  (I have not been able to find for how long, or his fate).

The next year, on November 12 1890, conductor Wesley S. Conser was in charge of another train that was sabatoaged, this time by the removal of a rail on the bridge over Lake Labish near Salem, where he suffered a broken leg.  As with the wreck at Albany Jct. both engineer and fireman were killed.  In 1903 Conser was given charge of the special that brought President Theodore Roosevelt to Oregon.


 



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/20 20:38 by haneckow.

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Oregon and California #23, was repaired and returned to service.  In 1891 it was renumbered into the SP system-wide sequence to #1356 (pictured at Roseburg as such).  It was scrapped in Sacramento on March 16 1918.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/20 16:19 by haneckow.

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Thanks for the history.  Some things never really change, with human behavior, do they?

Great read. Thanks.  

Nickatnight 

Thanks, Dan.