Re: Story about Engineer Bill Walk for Denver & Rio Grande R
Posted:
Wed Oct 26, 2016 10:38 amby Jason Rose
Here is the article:
Engineer Walk of the Denver & Rio Grande
MR. & MRs. JAMES ROSE HARVEY
William Walk of Pueblo, Colorado, is still a railroad man
despite the fact that he was retired by the Denver & Rio Grande
Railroad in 1923, having completed forty years, four months and
fourteen days of service with that road. He grew up with the
railroads in Colorado, he likes to talk about railroading, and he
has a first-hand knowledge of every phase of the work, from
section-hand to master mechanic. Perhaps that is why, in all
the 3,000,000 miles he estimates that he has traveled over the Rio
Grande road, he never had "a wheel off the track or a serious
accident.''
Engineer Walk came from a railroading family; his father
was master mechanic for the Missouri Pacific when "William was
but a small lad and it was in the cab of his father's engine that
he first acquired his love for the railroads, as he watched the
sparks fly from the tea-kettle smoke-stack which he remembers
as "almost as big as the engine itself." His father was careful
to explain to his small son that the smoke-stack was shaped thus,
to minimize the danger of prairie fires; wood-burning· engines
threw out sparks at an alarming rate, and although a screen
i1laced in the wide mouth of the stack served to catch the most
of them, still the prairies and forests were often set on fire by an
engine of that period.
William was born in Lexington, Missouri, on April 4, 1863.
When his father came west in 1872, William 's mother decided to
remain in the family home in Missouri and keep the children in
school. There were seven boys and one girl. He started very
early to learn a trade, that of saddle and harness-maker, but the
constant leaning against the bench caused the youngster to develop
a chronic pain in his side. His father, learning of his ill
health, sent a pass for Bill to come to Colorado, thinking the
change of climate might benefit J1im. The train ride was such
a delight that William remembers every incident as if it were
but yesterday. The trip from Kansas City took three days and
two nights, the frequent stops for fuel and water, herds of buffalo
obstructing the track, the narrow uncomfortable coaches with
small window space, the sparks, cinders and smoke, constituted
no hardship to the young traveler. The elder Walk met Bill at
the depot in Denver and took him to consult Dr. R. G. Buckingham,
a personal friend. Dr. Buckingham, who had come across
the plains in 1863, now enjoyed a large and lucrative practice;
he was one of the pioneers who helped build Denver, having organized
and served as first president of the Denver Medical Association
in 1874, president of the school board District No. 1,
mayor of Denver, and instigator of the deaf mute bill.1 He gave
William Walk a clean bill of health, telling him all he needed was
a change of occupation, with plenty of exercise in the open air.
He naturally turned to railroading.
In 1870 General Palmer had launched the Denver and Rio
Grande Company, Congress having granted the right-of-way
through public lands. 'The Union Contract Company began, at
Denver, construction of a narrow gauge system in March, 1871;
by Oct. 21, 1871, 70 miles had been built to Colorado City. The
railroad reached Pueblo, 118 miles from Denver, June 15, 1872,
and the first excursion train, drawn by the locomotive "Ouray,"
arrived there July 2nd of that year. In 1872 the line was extended
38 miles to the coal mines n ear Canon City and in 1874
reached Canon City itself. In 1877, when Grneral Palmer, accompanied
by his chief engineer, J. A. McMurtrie, made a trip to
Oro (later to become the silver bonanza camp, called Leadville),
it was decided to extr rn1 tltr narrow gauge railway to that new
camp without delay. Men were sent also to begin work on a line
through Raton Pass into New Mexico, but the Denver & Rio
Grande men arrived just 30 minutes after a force of Atchison
Topeka & Santa Fe graders had set to work. The Santa Fe me~
were equipped with Winchesters, so the Denver & Rio Grande
crew decided not to build any railroads in that vicinity. Then
began the famous Royal Gorge war. After peace was concluded
the Denver & Rio Grande, which had built to Alamosa in July,
1878, was extended to Espanola, N. M., 120 miles south of Alamosa,
only 34 miles from Santa Fe, Dec. 31, 1880. The wonderful
road through the Royal Gorge to Leadville was completed July
20, 1880. The end of another track was steadily pushed ahead
reaching Durango July 27, 1881. One year later it was extended
to Silverton. On Dec. 19, 1882, a line was completed into Grand
Junction. June 1, 1883, the narrow gauge Denver & Rio Grande
reached Ogden, Utah, over Marshall Pass, and through the Black
Canyon of the Gunnison. Mr. Walk helped to build the major
part of these lines, working on the road between Pueblo and
Salida, the roads to Malta and Leadville, as well as the line to
Salt Lake.
Of the Royal Gorge War Walk says : ''In 1879 both the Santa
Fe and Rio Grande men met in the gorge armed to the teeth. The
Denver & Rio Grande built eleven forts between Canon City and
the Twentieth mile post; these forts were manned by 190 men.
The Santa Fe sent a large, well-armed band to clear opposition
from the canyon but, as the Denver & Rio Grande occupied commanding
positions, they never even attempted to force their way
through. .Arsenals were maintained by both sides and the siege
kept .up for months; it was a noisy but bloodless war, most of the
warriors using blanks. At the Twentieth mile post James R.
DeRemer, Assistant Chief Engineer of the Denver & Rio Grande
lettered 'Dead-Line' on a tie and placed it across the railroad
grade. The Santa Fe men never quite got up the nerve to cross it.
At about the same time the Supreme Court of the United States
decided in favor of the Denver & Rio Grande, so the war was
ended. This historic tie for a long time bung between two trees
at Texas Creek station where passengers on the new line viewed
it with interest, and a number of the rock forts still stand in the
can~'on , silent reminders of the determined war waged for right-of-
way."
William Walk gave the following account of his experiences
while working on the road into Leadville: "We would build
awhile, then run out of materials and have to wait for more rails
and ties. Leadville was a rip-roaring place and of course we all
got interested in prospecting, so during these lay-offs from the
railroad, I dabbled in mining a bit. My partner and I were
successful in locating the Yankee Doodle Mine. I disposed of my
interest at once for $10,000 but my partner held on for a while
longer and realized $50,000 for his share.
''While working on the line at Leadville mountain fever
laid me low. They rushed me to the old Colorado Coal and Iron
hospital at Abriendo, where all I got to eat for eight days was
toast and egg-nogs. Those egg-nogs cured me of any liking I
might have had for liquor. I never wanted to taste it again.
In those days there was plenty of it, every grocery store had its
barrel of whiskey at 75c a gallon, and it was mighty poor stuff,
too.''
One of the worst storms Walk ever experienced was while
working out of Gunnison on the road through the narrow Black
Canyon. The Denver & Rio Grande had seventeen engines off
the track in one night during a blinding blizzard. This stretch
of track was always dangerous, land-slides were so frequent it
was customary to carry dynamite on every engine to blast rocks
too heavy for the train crews to roll off the track. Close calls
in that crooked, narrow canyon were all too frequent.
William Walk operated his first engine at the age of 18 years.
He became a fireman Sept. 12, 1883, was promoted to freight engineer
May 16, 1888, and passenger engineer on May 16, 1901.
Engines were Bill Walk 's first love. He knew them all; he
tells the following story of them : ''Engines in the early days
all were named. The first engine into Denver was the 'D. H.
Moffat.' That locomotive sure had a record! It drew the first
passenger train into Cheyenne, and later performed the same
service at Salt Lake when the railroad reached that city. The
Denver & Rio Grande eventually purchased it from the Union
Pacific to use in hauling construction trains.
''The first engines purchased by the Denver & Rio Grande
railroad were made by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia
and brought into Denver on flat cars by the Kansas
Pacific railroad. They were three sister engines called the 'Tabeguache,'
the 'Shawano' and 'Montezuma.'
"The 'Ouray' was the first engine into Pueblo from Denver,
in 1872 over the Denver & Rio Grande.
''The De Remer fast passenger engine No. 85 was purchased
from the Baldwin Co. after the Gorge war and named in honor
of assistant chief engineer De Remer.
"The later engines, like old 168 now retired and preserved
as an historical monument at Colorado Springs, had numbers instead
of names. ''
The Montezuma, the first locomotive put into service by the
Denver & Rio Grande, on July 3, 1871, was 35 feet 4 inches long
and weighed 121/2 tons; the height of the smoke stack above the
rail was 9 feet 9 inches.2 William Walk piloted this engine for
years; it was with real sorrow that he drove it over the narrow gauge
railroad for the last time and retired it to the round-house.
Of the Montezuma, Walk says, ''There was a sweet little engine
for you; she was perfectly balanced, not top-heavy, and took the
curves like a piece of tangent track, yet she never so much as
spilled a drop of water from a glass set in any of the window of
the cab.''
When the State Historical Society built its model of the
Montezuma not one record or plan of the little engine could be
found anywhere; even the Baldwin Locomotive ·works no longer
had its plans of the "baby engine." However, from pictures and
various descriptions, the Society built so authentic a model that
the only criticism William Walk could find with the finished
replica was: ''It ought to have a wooden cow-catcher. "That 's the
way the Montezuma first came out. Later it was found impractical
and changed to steel."
The first rails for the narrow gauge railroads were imported
from England; they were constructed from iron not steel and
weighed 30 pounds to the yard. These later were increased up
to 52 pounds and made of steel. The "Denver," the first narrow
gauge passenger car built in the United States, was manufactured
by the Jackson and Sharp Company of Wilmington, Delaware.4
It was 35 feet long, 7 feet wide, 101/2 feet high, and weighed 15,000
lbs. The seats were double on one side and single on the other.
this arrangement being reversed in the center of the car, so that
each side carried half double and half single seats-an arrangement
designed to secure perfect balance of weight when the car
was full. The single seats were 19 inches wide, the double seats
36 inches, the aisle 17 inches; the cars were finished in the best
style. After 1871 the width oE the cars was steadily increased to
8 feet and the seating capacity from 36 to 47 passengers. Of
these coaches Walk says, "They were fairly comfortable, but the
window space was small and the lighting poor. We could seat
36 passengers if they were not too fat."
Engineer Walk piloted all types of engines, from the 12-ton
Montezuma to the 1700 's; he liked the one-spot and the seven spot
the best. He covered every mile of the Denver & Rio Grande
track with the exception of the branch between Howard and
Calcite.
Most of Walk 's railroading was on narrow gauge tracks. Although
the Denver & Rio Grande eventually converted its main
road to standard gauge, an operation completed in 1890, still
the road maintained over 800 miles of narrow gauge line.
Of the early towns on the lines he traversed Walk says:
''When we first built the railroad into Salida, the settlement was
called South Arkansas, it was nothing but a mud hole then,
now it's pretty.
"Antonito was the toughest town in the state when I first
struck it in the late '70s. It was a railroad town with lots of
Mexican and Indians.
"I watched Creede grow from a patch of willows to a city
of thousands of people in six months. I was piloting number 241
from Wagon Wheel Gap into Creede when the mining excitement
was at its height; it was downright dangerous to run an engine
over that piece of track; people flocked into the region, carrying
their luggage and using the right-of-way as a side-walk. I had to
keep two men in the engine cab, one on either side, to watch the
track ahead of the engine to see that no one was hit, for people
paid absolutely no attention to the on-coming train. On the
single track from the Gap to Creede, traffic became so congested
that the Denver & Rio Grande placed me in charge of that section
with instructions to straighten things out. When I found
that I couldn't get a meal for less than $1.50 and that I was lucky
to find a bed or a cot at nights, I refused to remain in wide-open
Creede, but the company sent up a sleeping car and a cook and
I finished the job in comfort. I was there when Bob Ford was
killed, a deed for which there was absolutely no justification.
Gambling and gun play was rampant. In the big gambling hall,
the Denver Exchange, one night I watched Otto Floto play for
and win Renfro 's interest in the Sells and Renfro Circus.
"When I first came t.o Pueblo sunflowers and weeds covered
the area now known as Union A venue. Most of the town lay
between 3rd and 4th streets on Santa Fe Avenue. Baxter's Mill
stood where the Federal Building now stands, behind this mill
a water wheel was built, and a ditch, known as Baxter's Ditch,
ran through the Central Block site. From this source early Pueblo
obtained its water supply. The first round house was located
where the Union Depot now stands, the court house, first of
adobe, then of brick, was just above 7th Street; Bessemer, covering
the entire mesa, was a town founded and sustained by the
Colorado Coal and Iron Company; it had its own government and
was not incorporated into the town of Pueblo until 1894. The
jail was on C Street, bark of the old Wes tern National Bank;
across from the jail was Heal Estate Row, which burned to the
ground one night, a fire in which 'Barney the Bum' met
his death. The Montgomery Opera House between Main and
Santa Fe, on 7th Street, is now the Sevelle Hotel, with stucco
applied over the original adobe."
Walk has many an interesting incident to tell in connection
with his railroading experiences. One day M. W. Sample,
Trustee of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, came to him with a
real problem. "Bill," he said, "there are a lot of English stockholders
in the Denver & Rio Grande. They want the line to buy
some English engines. They even had one shipped in and want
us to try it out against one of ours. Can you beat that engine
in a try-out, Bill. William Walk grinned at Sample. "There's
one way to do it, Mr. Sample," he said, "set the 24 so she will
carry 180 pounds of steam but show only 130 pounds on the
gauge, and I'll run away from that English engine."
A crowd gathered at La Veta for the tests, Denver & Rio
Grande officials, English stockholders, and railroad employees.
The trains were weighed in, the engineers instructed to maintain
130 pounds of steam, and the test was on. Bill Walk describes
the race: ''That English engine was the queerest looking thing
that ever set a wheel on the track; it looked just like two engines
back together, a smoke stack at each end, and the fire box, coal
box and boiler was in the middle; when the engine ahead was
pulling up a mountain grade, the rear one acted as a brake. The
English engine pulled out first; twenty minutes later I opened up
old 241 and took out after her. I caught up with her outside
Ojo, pushed her through Ojo, shoved her around Dump Mountain,
and gave her a boost over La Veta pass. The next day we
changed positions, when I got around Dump Mountain the English
engine had not yet pulled into Ojo; I was one hour ahead of
her over the pass. The Denver & Rio Grande officials found 'the
Farleigh unsuited to the mountain grades' and none was purchased
by the road.''
One night as Walk was making his run from Salida to Pueblo
over the then broad gauge track, a heavy rain storm made the
going so bad that it took him 5 hours to go 24 miles. He stopped
at Cotopaxi and wired Pueblo not to let No. 1 go out of Salida
over the track he had just traversed. Walk watched the operator
send the message and place it on file. The next week, Mr.
E.T. Jeffery, President of the company, called Walk to come down
to the Pueblo office. "Bill," he said, "I'm disappointed in you;
you were the last one to come over that track in No. 2. Why in
hell didn't you report the condition of it? Number 1 went in
the river, why did you let her go out?" The chief train dispatcher,
Ed Gray, denied having received Bill's telegram, although
a check-up with the depot disclosed it had been sent; it was discovered
hanging on a hook beside Ed's desk. He was fired; after
two months he requested reinstatement but Jeffery told him,
"There's just one man in the system who can get you back on
the pay-roll. When Bill Walk gives his 0. K. you come back to
work." Walk, upon being consulted, remarked tersely, "No! he
hasn't got enough wrinkles in his belly yet.'' In six months
Walk relented and asked that Ed Gray be allowed to come back
to work. From that time forth Ed looked upon Walk as his
only friend, not being at all popular with the other railroad employees.
When Ed was seriously ill in the hospital he sent for
'William Walk to cheer him up. "Bill," he asked, "what do the
boys think about my being sick?" Bill like a little ray of sunshine
replied, "Ed, they hope you'll die and be buried face down,
so that when Gabriel blows his horn you'll start digging the
other way.''
On Jan. 10, 1916, Walk saw smoke curling out from under
the "hanging bridge," while enroute to Canon City on No. 6.
He backed up and, by means of the spurt hose used to wet down
the coal in the tender, he succeeded in putting out the blaze. The
company had spent a fortune raising this bridge above the water
level in the canyon; Bill was called into Den Yer by the General
Manager and given another of his frequent merit marks for this
deed.
High water was often encountered in the canyon; sometimes
it stood 2 and 3 feet deep over the tracks. The road master,
Asburn, would wade ahead with a long pole to test the track before
taking the train through. The water always put out the
fire in the fire-box, but usually the head of steam was enough to
carry the engine through. A pile of wood was always carried
high up back of the tank where it would remain dry until the
flood was past, and it was needed to rekindle the fire in the firebox
of the engine.
"Do you believe in hunches?" "'Walk asked suddenly. "I
always followed my hunches. E.T. Jeffery used to say he believed
I could see around curves-it wasn't my eye sight but sort of a
sixth sense that warned me of danger. One day, out of Salida,
something said to me, ''Stop! Stop! Stop!'' I did. The conductor,
Dave Muse of Denver, was always a bit impatient with
my hunches, however he obligingly walked around the curve
just ahead and came back white-faced. "Bill," he said, "if you
had taken the train around that curve you'd have cracked her
into six thousand tons of rock. Half of the cliff has dropped on
the track.''
On another occasion the same thing occurred near Spikebuck,
only this time the conductor, upon walking around a curve
found that a bridge had been washed out by a cloud burst.
One afternoon Walk was bringing the train clown from
Salida, when he saw a 15-foot wall of water coming down behind
him through the Royal Gorge. He opened the throttle, tore into
Canon City and wired the Pueblo office that high water was coming
down the Arkansas. The warning enabled many people to
leave their homes and reach safety before the flood hit that city.
Walk was offered a number of good positions while with the
road, but preferred to operate an engine; he disliked executive
work. At one time he was sent to inspect motors for the Baldwin
Locomotive Company, at a salary of $235 per month, but felt the
old call of the throttle and the open track. For a year he held
the position of master mechanic for the system, but would not
accept a permanent appointment.
He married Eva C. Miles in 1888; she died 18 months later
at the age of 21 years. In 1890 he married Cora G. Stone. The
Walks had three children; Hazel C. Anderson of Denver, Mildred
Lee Renolds, a teacher at Keating Junior High School in Pueblo,
and George W. Walk, who is with the Rock Island out of Trenton,
Missouri.
One day \William was on his No. 2 run; he woke up two hours
later in the hospital, having had a heart attack while at the
throttle of his engine. He retired and went to Florida, where
he gradually regained his health. He held a number of other
positions in Pueblo-that of turnkey at the Pueblo County Jail
from 1924-1926; from 1926-1930 he was Justice of the Peace for
Pueblo County. Since then he has spent his winters in Florida
and the summers in Pueblo looking after a number of residences
he owns there.
Walk looks upon the modern huge "mallets" with disdain.
He proclaims fondly, ''The Montezuma, a one-spot, could outrun
any of them. Why one time I was using her to pull the pay-car
over the system; we had been out sixteen days, and Jim 0 'Conner,
the pay-master, was anxious to get home. When we got to
Graneros at the top of the hill, he said, . "Bill, if we could only
get to Pueblo in time to catch the 12 :15, I could get home to Denver
tonight.'' I said, "All right, Jim, tie yourself on!'' We took
the last 11 miles in nine minutes. How's that for a record?"
"No one knows what became of the Montezuma. When I
took her into the round house after her last run, she probably
was dismantled for parts or melted up for scrap. Too bad-she
ought to have been preserved as an historical relic of early railroading
in Colorado."