Fred Tefft

[anonymous]

Spent the first 40+ years of my life in Mulvane, Kansas, definitely a Santa Fe town. Watched trains from my bedroom window as a kid. Didn’t know there were any roads beside the Santa Fe.

One day in the 70s, as chief of the area rural fire department, I responded to a call of a railroad tank car on fire. Thankfully it was merely a hot box that needed cooling, which we did with judicious use of a CO2 extinguisher.

But what was this intruder on this Santa Fe bastion? Talking with the conductor I learned of the Missouri Pacific Railroad, and that this train operated over the Santa Fe, getting off the Santa Fe at the next town west, Belle Plain. Certainly different than what I was used to, the train consisted of one locomotive, 5 cars and a caboose.

In 1984 I became involved with the fledgling Great Plains Transportation Museum in Wichita, and became a student of the history of all railroads in Kansas. I look forward to learning more from this group.

Fred in Wichita

[Webmaster]

Fred, I was the brakeman on a Missouri Pacific local that had the exact same problem in the exact same location. This would have been in late 1978 or early 1979. The conductor was Paul Leathers. He was short and thin and liked to talk. We had been fighting with this car for several miles and were on the wye between the two Santa Fe mains in this area and pretty much out of the way of their operations when we heard the siren go off. I’m sure the individual that saw the smoke thought the tank car was on fire and going to blow up. After the fire department had the fire out, the conductor went across the way to a store (local co-op, if I remember correctly) and bought some grease cartridges to lube the offending journal. I don’t remember how far the car made it before we set it out, but we were able to get off the Santa Fe before we had to stop for it.

I would be willing to bet that this was the same incident. If true, what are the odds that this event would set in motion life events that eventually lead to this thread on this forum. Amazing!

[anonymous]

The power of the internet with stuff like this is amazing. On a music forum years ago I was talking about my friend’s dad, long since deceased, who was a great amateur player, he worked doing oil rig contract services of some kind. In the early 60s when I was in high school I’d go over to his house and he’d show me things and let me play music with him. On the forum I went into great detail about the country music he played and the Gibson guitar he had. In a day or two some one I had no idea who responded, ” yeah, I saw that guy in 1964 in North Louisiana out at a wellhead, my dad used to take me out to the sites and this guy was in the shack playing guitar”. Pat Flory

[Author]

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