On June 18, 1918, a troop train carrying soldiers from Camp MacArthur’s 80th Field Artillery left East Waco and traveled eastward on the Cotton Belt line, heading toward a southern training camp. After traveling for fifteen minutes (about seven miles), the train derailed just north of Selby, killing Corporals Laurn Harrell and August Handschumacher, Jr. and injuring about thirty military personnel and four railroad employees.
According to a report made by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) on the incident, Troop Train Number 264 consisted of fourteen passenger coaches, six freight cars, and a caboose, and was a Baldwin Consolidation-type, 2-8-0, Number 510, of the St. Louis Southwestern Railway of Texas, also known as the Cotton Belt line.
The derailment occurred as the train approached a trestle crossing the Tehuacana Creek. After an official investigation and upon hearing statements from the train’s engineer, Statham, the ICC came to the conclusion that a sun kink served as the main factor in the accident. Sun kinks can occur when extreme heat causes rails to bulge or spread. At the time of the accident on that June day, it was reported to be 103 degrees. Statham reported to the agency that the sun kink was “3 to 5 inches in width and about half a rail length long, located about 400 feet south of the trestle; he then set the air [brakes] in emergency and jumped.”
The ICC report also factored in the poor condition of the track: “this section was not properly supported by a ballast, and should not have been permitted to remain in that condition.” This information led to the determination that the locomotive began its derailment 113 feet south of the trestle, causing the engine to turn over when it began to cross. A Waco News-Tribune account of June 19, 1918, states: "at the time of the wreck [the train] was passing over a wooden bridge across Tehuacana Creek. As the engine went onto the bridge, timbers suddenly gave way and the locomotive ploughed through.”
The ICC found no mechanical problems with the Baldwin Locomotive Number 510. However, the arrangement of the cars made the event more tragic. During the derailment, the engine’s tender cistern detached from its frame, and unfortunately, the first passenger car directly behind it was composed entirely of wood. The tender’s frame and tank practically demolished the wooden coach, and the two deaths and many of the injuries occurred in this car. The ICC claimed that placing this lighter wooden coach behind the locomotive with the heavier steel cars behind it “undoubtedly increased the danger of injury to the passengers.”
Much speculation followed the incident as to the cause. On June 19, 1918, the Waco News-Tribune reported on a popular belief: “The favorite opinion of the hundreds of officers, camp and railroad officials, and citizen spectators, was that the bridge or the rails had been tampered with, by persons knowing of the troop movement.” With the United States into its second year of involvement in World War I, it is not surprising that such theories of sabotage were being put forth. Just a few days after the derailment, the investigation reports debunked these theories.
]]>The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company began its corporate existence in the days following the Civil War and was intended to funnel business from Kansas City and points north and east to a new rail route being cut across Indian Territory and through Texas. The Katy, touted in advertisements as the "Gateway to Texas," breached the Lone Star State's frontier near the site of present-day Denison, where the first regular train arrived on Christmas Day, 1872.
The Katy eventually expanded operations in Texas and reached Waco in the 1880s, establishing a depot in the 300 block of South Eighth Street (as indicated on the Waco History map). M-K-T came to recognize Waco’s importance as a central location upon the 268 miles of track, and in 1910, established a roundhouse in a rural area north of the city. As businesses opened to provide goods and services for workers for the rail company, a city grew up around the roundhouse which today is known as Bellmead.
One of the most infamous publicity stunts of all time, The Crash at Crush, took place about fifteen miles north of Waco, featuring two M-K-T locomotives intentionally set on a head-on collision course on September 15, 1896. Advertised for months in advance, the event drew more than forty thousand spectators to an event which ended tragically in three deaths and dozens of injuries. The Katy settled all claims with cash and lifetime passes. William George Crush—vice president of the railroad and disciple of P. T. Barnum—was "fired" the evening of the crash, but rehired the following day. Rumor even had it he got a bonus for all the attention he brought the railroad, which curiously saw a surge in business afterwards. He worked for the company for fifty-seven years until his retirement.
Despite the catastrophe of The Crash at Crush, the Katy prospered into the first half of the twentieth century. At one point in 1912, the M-K-T owned more than 1,600 miles of operated track in Texas. Passengers luxuriated aboard the Texas Special, the Bluebonnet, and the Katy Flyer. In 1931, even in the middle of the Great Depression, the company owned 82 locomotives and 1,000 cars and reported passenger earnings of $1.7 million and freight earnings of more than $8 million. Wheat rolled in from Missouri and Kansas, and oil flowed out of Texas.
But after the boom years of World War II, the railroad began a long slide into oblivion. New transportation options like air travel and freeway systems took their toll on the once-prosperous line. In 1964, the 99-year-old company that had brought Midwestern wheat south and sent "Texas tea" (oil) north had fallen onto hard times and dropped the passenger trade to concentrate its resources on freight. On January 26, 1964, dozens of people crowded aboard for one last historic jaunt of steel and steam.
Despite cost-cutting measures, mergers, and consolidations, the Katy's fortunes continued to decline. In 1967 it reported a net loss of more than $10 million. Even a $19 million government guaranteed loan in 1976 to repair deteriorating track ties could not stop the railroad’s declining fortunes. In 1988, the Interstate Commerce Commission gave Union Pacific and its subsidiary, the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company, permission to buy the Katy. On December 1, 1989, the two companies merged and the Missouri-Kansas-Texas was no more.
]]>The roots of Bellmead grew out of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company (M-K-T). In June of 1910, M-K-T purchased 90 percent of the Texas Central Railway, a line of tracks running 268 miles from Waco to Rotan. Because of Waco’s central location along the line, M-K-T built a massive locomotive complex called a roundhouse in a rural area near the city. The region received its name in 1911 when M-K-T President Charles Schaff, on an inspection tour of the new facility, noted to a Katy railroad attorney that the area around the roundhouse reminded him of the farm where he grew up in Belle Meade, Tennessee. The area around the roundhouse soon thereafter adopted the name Bellmead.
In 1913, surveyors laid out “Bellmead Court” in lots and blocks. The land did not catch the interest of many buyers since it was prone to frequent flooding. Eventually, the company divided the Ashleman Farm—which lay adjacent to the M-K-T property—into lots that sold for thirty-five dollars each to families working for the railroad and to those wishing to provide goods and services to those families. Over time, more people moved to the area and businesses followed.
The 1928-29 Polk City Directory was the first to list Bellmead streets and businesses, showing a merchant’s store, two-story rooming house, garage, a barber shop, gas station, a grocery store, and the Bellmead Baptist Church. The state highway department brought a vital transportation link to the area in 1932 through the construction of State Highway 84. In 1939, residents voted to incorporate as a city, but the movement failed because the area lacked independent sewage, water, and fire services.
During the Great Depression, men laid off from the M-K-T railroad found work with the Works Progress Administration. They built water and sewer lines to serve the area, freeing it from its reliance upon Waco for such services. Around that same time, a volunteer fire department was established and the fire station became a center of civic activity.
Before World War II, Bellmead’s economy depended heavily upon the M-K-T railroad shops. However, the war brought about the need for new and different services and industries, reviving Bellmead’s economy. General Tire & Rubber Company arrived to produce military truck tires, Waco Army Airfield (later called James Connally Air Force Base) was established, and the M-K-T Railway received a boost as one of the chief transporters of crude oil from Texas to the rest of the nation. Activity centered upon the war effort resulted in a rapid increase in the population. In the early 1940s the population was approximately 25, but by 1949 it had increased to 800.
In 1951, Bellmead citizen Chuck Lovelace learned from a Waco city councilman that the city planned to annex the Bellmead area in 1952. After discussing the issue with other citizens, Lovelace convinced the county commissioners to hold an incorporation election, allowing the citizens of the area to determine whether they wanted to be a separate city. The December 19, 1952, election was very close, but ultimately Bellmead voted to approve incorporation. A group of local residents drafted the initial charter and the first city council meeting was held on November 12, 1953.
Bellmead continued to grow rapidly toward the twenty-first century. Although Connally Air Force Base closed in 1965, Texas A&M purchased the site and established James Connally Technical Institute, now known as Texas State Technical College. Today, the city is home to nearly ten thousand residents and remains an integral part of McLennan County.
]]>Waco was a city on the move at the turn of the twentieth century, and its run into modernity was aided by the advent of the interurban electric railway.
Although Waco had other forms of mass transit since the days of the stagecoach, with first mule-hauled and then electrically-powered streetcars, it was the Texas Electric Railway that ultimately inherited the early rights-of-way to do business in the city, though several transit firms vied for traffic in its early days.
Citizen’s Railway Company, formed in 1877, used eighteen mule-drawn cars, and ten electric ones after 1891, to get commuters and shoppers where they needed to go until 1912. Southern Traction Company succeeded it, reconstructing tracks and adding extensions. Additionally, a streetcar company named Huaco Heights leased equipment from Citizen’s Railway Company and operated from 1913 to 1918, servicing the Huaco Heights real estate development.
It took John Frank Strickland, a man of vision and drive, to pull together the diverse elements to craft an efficient system. Strickland traveled to Texas by wagon train in 1878 from his native Alabama. He later went on to create the largest interurban rail system in the Southwest, with more than two hundred miles of track connecting commercial and cultural centers throughout the state.
Working his way up through plowing, cotton ginning, and then the grocery trade, Strickland became involved in electric power generation in Waxahachie in 1892. He later served as president of companies such as Texas Power & Light and Dallas Power & Light, positions he held until his death. Strickland and partners saw construction of interurban railroads as a complementary function of their power companies, and in 1908, a Strickland company began interurban service from Dallas to Sherman.
By 1911, Texas Traction operated seventy-seven miles of track from Dallas and Denison as well as local lines in Sherman, Denison, and McKinney. In 1912, interurban transportation from Dallas to Waxahachie began. The company extended the line to Waco in October of 1913, and absorbed streetcar lines in Waxahachie and Waco.
On New Year’s Day in 1917, Strickland merged Southern Traction Company and Texas Traction Company to create the Texas Electric Railway Company. The rail also served as the right-of-way for the electric power lines. Area drugstores and hotel lobbies sold tickets, offering different rates for children, clergy, and “excursion” groups. As ridership soared and business boomed, Strickland also won a postal contract to transport US mail, and employed a clerk to sort the letters and packages along the way.
The system’s usage peaked around 1920, when some 819,000 passengers rode the rails. The interurban’s decline began during the Great Depression, and the line started taking freight to make up for the loss of passenger revenue. Business rallied again during World War II, when gasoline shortages and rationing of rubber made rail travel more attractive than driving.
But after the war, the lure of private-car ownership and the development of better roads led to the system’s decline. The streetcar operations of Texas Electric Railway were sold to Waco Transit Company in 1946. As part of that sale, the streetcar continued to run from downtown to East Waco along the Texas Electric’s city track. But streetcar service ended when Texas Electric Railway ceased operations on December 31, 1948. Commuter service lasted for another year by the Texas Electric Bus System before being entirely phased out. Within days of the company’s closure, workers began pulling up tracks and taking down copper wire to sell off the assets and liquidate.
Remnants of the interurban railway remain visible in downtown Waco today. Pylons which once supported the interurban bridge as it spanned the Brazos River (noted on the Waco History map) offer a constant reminder of the interurban’s legacy of providing citizens with a convenient and economical means of transportation both throughout the city and the state.
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