Railroad Freight Yards by Zina Abbott

 

My upcoming book in the Old Timey Holiday Kitchen series features the third sibling of the Jewell family, the brother of two sisters, who already had their own romances published. In prior books, I identified him as having a railroad job in Kansas City, where the family came from before everyone but him moved to Colorado. Rather than being a ticket agent, baggage handler, or rail maintenance laborer, I decided he should work with managing freight. Thus started my quest to learn the ins and outs of how rail freight was handled in the 1880s.

 Although possibly a decade or two later than the setting of my story, this photograph is of the Kansas City freight yard. Note that many of the cars appear to be made of wood. There is also at least one gondola (like an open wagon) and a few metal tank cars. These cars get moved around the freight yard and from one railway's freight yard to another by using smaller locomotives designated for use strictly in a company's own freight or repair yards. 

Do not trust the inforation you receive from AI on a Google search to be infallible. When I specifically asked about the Kansas City freight warehouse in 1885, I was told the freight for all the companies were handled together and managed by one freight terminal. Then, after stumbling onto a Facebook Kansas City historical group, I searched back through several years of entries and found this 1884 map of the Kansas City rail yard. There were five railway companies that used the Kansas City Union Depot (orange), the passenger terminal located in what is called the West Bottoms district (note the names of some of the neighborhoods) part of Kansas City. However, only three--Missouri Pacific (maroon), Union Pacific (blue), and Missouri River, Fort Scott, and Gulf (green) had freight depots there.

At the time this 1881 map of Kansas City and eastern Kansas was drawn, it appears the only section that was identified as Kansas City, Kansas, then was the little lip of land west of the straight north-south Kansas-Missouri border, east of the Kansas River, and south of the Missouri River. The smaller communities to the west of the state line--Wyandotte, Riverview, Armstrong, Armourdale, and Argentine--were not absorbed into Kansas City, Kansas, until a later time.

The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway did have rail access to the Kansas City, Missouri, depot (orange next to the yellow-green arrow), but its freight yard was located in Argentine, Kansas (blue circle). 

 

 Here is a map of another freight yard. Kensington, Michigan, was a hub for two rail lines, the Illinois Central Railroad and the Michigan Central Railroad and Belt Railway Connection. It appears both rail lines shared a passenger depot (red). However, the bottom-right of the map shows the roundhouse (blue), the freight house (green), and thirteen and a half miles of track that is part of the freight yard (orange) of the Michigan Central Railroad.

 

The situation is slightly different for a town like Salida, Colorado, the city on which I based my hypothetical town of Cleora. In 1885, Salida was a connection station. It had two spur lines, but all three lines were part of a single rail company, the Denver and Rio Grande Railway. On the birdseye view map drawn in the nineteenth century, the depot was identified, as was the roundhouse. I know there was a machine shop, but the other buildings were identified as workshops. With all the silver mining and agriculture in the area, I am sure the Salida station managed its fair share of freight. However, I have found almost no information about it.  

In the image above, No. 6 is the Kansas City Roundhouse. No. 5 is the freight yard.

 

The possible reason I had difficulty finding pictures of freight yards might be due the fact that most of them are not pretty. Railroad depot buildings and train platforms are designed to be visually appealing to passengers. They are similar to nicely landscaped front and back yards, intended to delight the homeowners and impress friends and neighbors. Freight yards (also repair yards) are more like a residential side yard--that six-foot space between the garage and the fence where people keep their garbage cans, water hoses, and miscellaneous junk that does not fit inside the garbage can, so they store it there until they collect enough to justify a trip to the dump.

 

Here is the Pennsylvania Lines Great Freight Yard at Conway, PA. Look at the coal cars waiting to be shipped in all directions.

 

And, when one is talking about Kansas City's Kansas Pacific /Union Pacific Railroad's freight yard, let us not forget the closely related stockyard with the Cattle Exchange building next door. Some cattle might have been sent to local meat packing plants, but the majority were loaded onto cattle cars and transported north by other railroads to places like Chicago.

 

Stollen by Stella is not currently on pre-order but will be published in December. 

Book description:

     Stella Jorgenson struggles to enjoy the holiday now her father’s new job meant moving away from extended family and friends. She does not look forward to spending Christmas dinner with her father’s boss and his family, including the son scheduled to start working on her father’s crew—all strangers. Hopefully, baking her late mother’s traditional Stollen to share will inspire the spirit of Christmas.

     For Thomas, the one bright spot about moving home with his parents was both his sisters were married and out of the house. Unfortunately, along with his new foreman and the man’s daughter, his persnickety, former schoolmarm older sister and pesky, trouble-making younger sister will be home for Christmas. Perhaps he could convince himself to look forward to being with family and merrily celebrating the holiday if being here was not a constant reminder he had been forced out of the job he loved.

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19th Century UPRR Special Agents by Zina Abbott

 

As railroads were built across the eastern United States until there were thousands of miles of track, crime followed. Criminals became adept at stealing luggage, freight, and livestock. There was no railroad police at the time. Often local law enforcement was inadequate, or missing altogether. Sometimes, vigilante groups stepped in, but they proved unable to stop railroad crime.

UPRR Special Agents-Note special car for horses

Chief Engineer Benjamin Latrobe of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad established the first known railroad police for in 1849. However, most railroads began to hire agents from the agency created by Allen Pinkerton, who specialized in investigation by placing his agents undercover as both passengers and railroad employees. It was his work with the railroads that drew the attention of the government and Union Army during the Civil War era. However, Pinkerton’s agency continued their work with railroad investigations after the end of the war.

As displaced and disgruntled former soldiers from both sides of the Civil War turned to crime, the outlaw era in the 1860s began to ramp up. The first known train robbery with three masked bandits boarding a train occurred in October 1866. Soon, many railroads realized the need for their own police and investigative forces.

Union Station, Omaha, Nebraska

The Union Pacific Railroad began building their half of the Transcontinental Railroad shortly after the American Civil War. They were building tracks into largely unsettled states and territories where, in many places, no law enforcement jurisdiction had responsibility. They decided from the start to follow the pattern being set by some of the larger railroads in the east. They hired and trained their own railroad police and special agents for investigating railroad crime. In some areas, they were the only law enforcement around to defend their trains, employees, and passengers from outlaws, Indians, and others.

UPRR "Bulls"

Today, and starting more around the time of the 1930s Great Depression, railroad police who monitor and protect the trains, equipment, buildings, and tracks around the stations are known as “railroad bulls.” However, early in the days of special agents more involved in investigating railroad crime and tracking down criminals, that nickname was applied to them. As opposed to the railroad detectives in the East, the railroad special agents in the West were more inclined to work with sheriffs and U.S. marshals. Unlike uniformed railroad police in the East, who wore uniforms, special agents in the West often worked undercover. They dressed in plainclothes, usually suits.

 

They carried a shield to identify their position.

 

 Special agents for the Union Pacific encountered such bandits as “Gentlemen” Bill Carlisle, the Jones Brothers, Charlie Manning, and George “Big Nose” Parrott. 

 

“Big Nose George receives a cameo role in my most recently published book, Lauren, since he was part of the gang that attempted to derail the Union Pacific train near the Medicine Bow River bridge crossing. The Union Pacific Special Agent who investigated this attempted robbery was Henry C. “Tip” Vincents, who also played a cameo role in my book. He, along with Carbon County Deputy Sheriff, Robert Widdowfield, lost his life while investigating this crime.

 

Blown up express car

The Wild Bunch, the gang headed by Butch Cassidy, is credited with having robbed four trains between 1896 and 1901. On June 2, 1899, the gang flagged down a Union Pacific Limited near Wilcox, Wyoming—not far from where “Big Nose” George and his gang attempted their train robbery in 1878. Using dynamite to blast the doors open to the express car, they escaped with $30,000. 

 

Posse of UPRR Special Agents who pursued Wild Bunch

Unfortunately, most of the money disintegrated in the blast and floated away in the wind. Their next robbery in Tipton, Wyoming, was also a Union Pacific train.

Another Union Pacific Special Agent was Chief Agent William T. Canada. He was appointed chief of the Secret Services on June 1, 1891 by Union Pacific President, E.H. Harriman. He was assigned to work under the direction of General Manager, Edward Dickinson. By that time, holdups often involved murders of employees, passengers, and law enforcement officers. He had responsibility for overseeing all the police operations for all roads owned by Union Pacific which, by that time, included many more lines than the original stretch that formed part of the first Transcontinental Railroad. 

 

Ed Dickinson

This was the same Ed Dickinson who, as a superintendent and dispatcher stationed in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1878, also played a small role in my book, Lauren. 

According to the historical accounts, Ed Dickinson, along with Sheriff Nottage of Albany County traveled by train to where the railroad tracks by the Medicine Bow River had been tampered with. Once the sheriff determined the crime took place in Carbon County, Dickinson notified Sheriff Lawry, who sent out his deputy and Special Agent, "Tip" Vincents, to investigate.

 

 

Bill Canada

The two men—Canada and Dickinson—organized the Union Pacific Bandit Hunters. Chief Canada recruited only the best horsemen and shooters. Stationed out of Cheyenne, Wyoming, they were armed with the newest weapons and fastest horses. They were often found on a train made up of a sleeping car, a dining car, and a specially constructed baggage car to house their horses. Each team also had a telegrapher assigned to them, and an engine ready to take them at top speed to the site of any train robbery, including those hundreds of miles from Cheyenne. They successfully tracked down their quarries, made arrests, and were involved in several shootouts. Canada retired in 1914 due to his age. He died a year later at the age of 66 or 67.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed writing Lauren, Book 2 in the Rescue Me (Mail-order Brides) series, largely due to my decision to include real historical people as some of the characters. Their positions in real life I used as part of the plot. My main characters, Lauren Brower and Jeb Carter/Johnson are strictly fictional. However, as part of my character being a special agent for the Union Pacific Railroad, I heavily used the information I found on both the real people who lived and worked in that position, and the incidents that took place in Wyoming Territory during the last half of 1878.

To find the book description and purchase options, please CLICK HERE.

 

 

Sources:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/37066665/edward-dickinson#

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/110242580/william-t-canada

https://www.up.com/aboutup/community/safety/special_agents/index.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_Police_Department

https://www.odmp.org/officer/13669-special-agent-henry-vincents

http://www.therailroadpolice.com/history