(The following story by Bobbi Mlynar appeared on the Emporia Gazette website on September 3, 2009.)
EMPORIA, Kan. — Plans for a Big 4 picnic reunion are picking up steam.
Terry Coffelt, who is organizing the event, said that response from former and current Santa Fe Railway workers and their families has been beyond his expectations.
The picnic is open not only to the workers and their families, but to surviving family members and business people who were involved in supporting the picnic.
At this point, Coffelt thinks that 97-year-old Bill Maxwell will be the oldest former Santa Fe employee who plans to attend.
“He retired before I went to work,” said Coffelt, who was called on the Santa Fe in 1975, while he was attending college and working at the IBP meat processing plant.
Coffelt said last week, he expects a good crowd.
“I think we’re going to have 300 to 400,” he said last week. “The response has just been overwhelming. Not just Emporia. I know a lot of people who are driving down from Kansas City.”
The Big 4 picnic had a decades-long history in Emporia, which was a central location for the Middle Division.
The Big 4 railway unions — including engineers, brakemen, firemen, switchmen, conductors and yardmen — began holding annual picnics for employees in 1927, and from the beginning, they were well-attended events.
The Santa Fe added special cars and trains to bring in employees in the Middle Division and often from as far away as Chicago and Albuquerque. The picnics dwindled away in the 1970s, as Santa Fe closed departments and shrunk its staff in Emporia and across the entire line.
Coffelt’s goal has been to bring together as many of those Santa Fe workers and their families as possible, as well as the businessmen who helped support the picnic with their donations and advertising purchases.
Attendance at the second annual picnic, in 1928, was estimated at 2,500 people, according to the September 1928 issue of “The Locomotive Engineers Journal.”
“The Emporia Chamber of Commerce cooperated in every way possible, and all business houses in the town closed to give employes (sic) an opportunity to hear President Storey’s address,” the article stated. “… The Chamber of Commerce has again promised its cooperation and the picnic gives promise of becoming one of the biggest annual events of its kind along the Santa Fe System.”
The special trains coming in from the east and from the west were met at the depot by 175 cars donated by the Emporia Chamber of Commerce, the Journal stated.
The picnic was more than just food and an opportunity to conduct union business, Coffelt said.
“It developed to the point where they were having boxing matches, big baseball tournaments and always the kids,” he said. “Leonard Torrens’ brother won a pony down there one year.”
Dances, which sometimes turned rowdy, were part of the evening’s activities after the children were taken home, he said.
Santa Fe contributed funds, prizes and free train rides for the picnic.
“They participated in a hands-off manner,” Coffelt said. “They knew it was union stuff.”
Business owners had been a major factor in the picnic’s funding and its success, he said.
Business advertising in the union members’ time books, which sold for $4, helped raise the money needed to feed the more than 2,000 people who passed through the picnic food lines. The railroaders used the time books to track their mileage on runs.
“They would buy ads in the time book and we would try, in turn, to support them by shopping at their stores,” Coffelt said.
The picnic consistently drew huge crowds to Peter Pan Park and later to Soden’s Grove.
Political candidates came to the picnics because of the ease of reaching an interested audience from across the state.
According to Gazette files, then-Kansas Gov. Robert Docking, who was campaigning for another term in office in 1968, was to come to the picnic accompanied by his mother, the widow of former Gov. George Docking.
Fifth-District Rep. Joe Skubitz, a Republican, also was campaigning for re-election. He committed to attending the picnic, and to returning the following Friday to attend the Lyon County Free Fair.
Entertainment in the form of Indian dances by Boy Scouts were held in the late morning in front of a large wigwam.
Children climbed over an Emporia fire truck, took pony rides and rode in a two-horse cart while their parents visited. A report of the picnic stated that several retired employees, some of them from out-of-town, also came to the event.
“Scheduled this afternoon were bingo games for the women and older girls and baseball games between a team of men in Train and Yard Service and a team comprised of those in engine service,” the article said.
Activities moved to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post Home later in the evening for a dance at 9 p.m. The Blue Notes from Wichita were scheduled to play.
Earlier picnics also included “Friends of Railroaders” across Emporia. The Emporia Municipal Band welcomed the special train carrying Big 4 members and their families, and a flag-raising ceremony, games and contests, a basket dinner and ball game followed through the afternoon.
The women’s auxiliary of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen sponsored a dance that night in the Civic Auditorium, with music provided by the Sully Sullivan orchestra.
Luther S. Miller, columnist for “Railway Age” magazine, quoted The Gazette’s late editor, William Allen White, in his April 26, 1976, column about the significance of railroads. The column was subtitled “The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Emporia.”
Miller quoted White as writing, “The Santa Fe is the best thing that ever happened to Emporia. It is one of the best things that ever happened to Kansas. It is easily one of the best things that ever happened to this land.”
For Terry Coffelt and others, an interest in trains ran from fascination to near-obsession.
Coffelt’s interest was almost genetic. His father, grandfather and two great-uncles all worked for the railroad, and he recalled making weekly trips to watch the passenger trains come through.
“I used to drive down there every Sunday to see if I knew anybody getting off the train,” Coffelt said.
Visiting at his relatives’ homes out of town, he had the opportunity as a child to get on locomotives and ride a little.
“I guess it gets in your blood,” he said.
For former engineer Bob Foster, 83, the love of anything involving railroads not only got in the blood, it dominates his house and his family home.
He covered his wood-frame home in bricks from railroad stations around the countryside. A broad patio also is made of bricks, and spare bricks — each engraved with the city of origin, like Saffordville and Coffeyville — are stacked along the curved driveway to his house and in a 3-foot-tall stack along a white fence at the back of his house.
The entire area is full of memorabilia, from steam engine bells to wigwags and lanterns to two special, four-foot-diameter medallions that decorated designated trains to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial. One of the latter has been attached to the back of the house as part of the patio decor. Foster was engineer on one of those special bicentennial trains, which were Nos. 5700 through 5704.
He has a large set of framed time books that will be on display at the picnic, as well as albums full of photographs.
“Santa Fe sold most of their stuff out in 1988 in Topeka, and I spent a lot of money up there,” Foster said, grinning.
Some of the memorabilia was self-generated.
“I got so many photos it’s pathetic. But I’ve been collecting 60 years,” Foster said.
Foster started out in 1946 working on the Santa Fe’s “rip” track, where trains were repaired. The following year, he became a fireman, riding a steam engine on out-of-town runs that logged up to 4,000 miles a month. And he did it for 44 years.
He drove trains equipped with the “war engines” that were made in 1943 and 1944, and has builders’ plates from 18 engines, primarily Baldwin.
“I’ve got the biggest collection of builders’ plates in the world,” Foster said.
The job seemed to be a perfect fit for the railroader, who remembered the Big 4 picnics as one huge family reunion.
Now, most of the railroad jobs here have either been moved to other cities or eliminated. The last three years Foster worked as an engineer, he drove back and forth from Emporia to Kansas City.
Foster’s collection of equipment and other memorabilia continues to be a primary source of entertainment and pride, even in retirement.
As railroads modernized, however, they eliminated more than job positions. Foster found that he missed the rhythmic click-clack of the trains passing over the track and the changes brought about by roller bearings.
“It broke my heart when the depot burned,” Foster added.
Most of all, Foster misses his old job and all that it offered.
“I still miss the railroad,” he said. “I really do and I miss the guys I worked with. I’m looking forward to the picnic. I really am.”