(The Arkansas City Traveler published the following story by Foss Farrar on its website on August 16. H.W. Rector is a member of BLE Division 462 in Arkansas City, Kan.)
ARKANSAS CITY, Kan. — Becoming the engineer of a passenger train was a top job on the old Santa Fe here. It required years of seniority and hard work.
Wayne Rector, a lifelong Arkansas Citian, achieved that position in the mid 1960s after working for the railroad for more than 20 years. He retired in 1981, after nearly 40 years of work — and two years after passenger rail service through Arkansas City ceased.
“We were running at full capacity when they pulled the Amtrak from here in 1979,” Rector said Friday.
That didn’t matter, he added. By then, Amtrak had become a political football. Politicians from the East used their muscle to get Amtrak to change the Lone Star Route — as the north-south route through Ark City was known then. It was re-routed east of here and then down to Texas.
Ark City was an important rail town throughout most of the twentieth century.
“Passenger train travel probably reached its peak during World War II,” Rector said. “Following the war it still was an important mode of transportation during the 1950s and 1960s. During that time, Arkansas City had four passenger trains each way (northbound and southbound, between Chicago and Houston) plus a motor car . . .”
Also known as “The Doodle Bug,” the motor car route went south to Newkirk, Stillwater and Shawnee, then back to Ark City. The train consisted of an engine, mail compartment and passenger car.
A lot of mail was carried along with passengers on trains, said Johnny Goff, Rector’s fireman on the trains. The postal service’s decision to quit using rail for mail delivery was a significant factor in the demise of passenger rail service here, he added.
Goff and Rector recalled some “close calls” — near collisions with trucks or cars trying to beat the train at railroad crossings. However, no one was injured on their runs.
“Johnny and I had one sad situation when we were coming north one evening about 10 minutes after we had left Guthrie (Okla.),” Rector said. “It was dusk, and there was a flashing red light at a crossing we were approaching at 80 miles per hour.
“Then we saw something ahead — a fire truck and fireman, both on either side of the track — both clear of the track. The fireman was on one side aiming a hose aimed at a fire in a dead tree. As we passed the crossing, the train chopped the hose in two and the fireman lost the water stream.”
Several “near misses” were reported by the Santa Fe team in a stretch from Edmund to Norman, Okla., where concrete ready-mix trucks were operated around rail crossings.
“We hit one truck one day after we blew the whistle but the truck driver didn’t stop,” Rector said. “The collision knocked him back (away from the track).”
Rector said he got out of the locomotive cab and approached the truck driver. “Are you the driver?” he asked and the shaken man nodded. “Well, let me shake the hand of a man who the Good Lord has just saved his life.” The truck driver extended his hand.
Many drivers who try to beat trains at crossings don’t realize that it takes about three-quarters of a mile for a train to stop, Rector added.
Rewarding memories of operating a passenger train include seeing people wave from the side of the road as the train goes by, he said. Some of these folks were local residents of an area who would come each day to wave at the train.
“Two or three friends would correspond with us because they were regulars who waited for the train,” Rector said.
Passenger service probably reached its peak during World War II, around the time Rector was hired by the Santa Fe, he said. Rector had graduated from Ark City High School in 1938 and then from Ark City Junior College (now Cowley College) in 1940.
Rector married Elizabeth Burrell on July 27, 1941. (The couple recently celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary.)
“I was working in my dad’s feed store, making $21 a week,” he recalled. “When I made deliveries in the Sleeth Addition, I would check in briefly with Ralph Scott at the old Santa Fe Round House to see if they had a job opening. He would shake his head no.”
By then, the war was heating up. “I had already registered for the draft,” Rector said. “One Saturday night as we were about to close the feed store, I got a call from Ralph Scott asking if I still wanted the job. I said yes.”
He started off as a laborer in the Santa Fe Round House, which was a big operation then. It was a huge service area and back shop for maintenance of steam locomotives.
“I changed from round house to road seniority and became a fireman on a steam-engine locomotive in April 1942,” he said.”I was a freight engineer quite a while too.”
At that time, there were about 100 men working in road service and another 100 working in yard service in the Ark City area, he said. They included engineers and firemen.
Early in their railroad careers, Rector and Goff worked on steam-engine trains. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, diesel engines started to be put in service, Goff said.
Rector was the engineer on the first Amtrak train operated out of Ark City, and he brought in the last one before the service was discontinued.
Commenting on the possibility of passenger rail service to be re-established here, he said.
“Airlines kind of took over. And they keep underfunding Amtrak. But you never know.”