Oral History

Teacher's Packet Oral Histories Articles Historic Research Students	Painting depicting latter part of nineteenth century with train in station on far left and postman surrounded by people with hands outstretched for mail: artist John Sloan (1937):Bronxville Station:Yonkers New York; courtesy National Archives.
A Surprising Mail Train Episode East Of Promontory On The Old Central Pacific Railroad During The Golden Spike Era. By Pappy Clay - February 25th, 1969 Here is recorded an exciting episode when the "Westbound Fast Mail" was unavoidably delayed and detained at Blue Creek water tank for a full 45 minutes. It was a cold spring morning in 1888 when the engineer was slowing his train for the brief five-minute period required to take on water at Blue Creek water tank prior to climbing Promontory Hill. As the fireman was "climbing the tender to grab the pull-rope of the water-spout" when he noticed "back along the string of blind mail-cars", one car which was emitting blue smoke from itsw roof-ventilators, so he concluded they had been pulling a mail-car which was on fire and he immediately gave the alarm. The head brakeman ran back several coach-length and ascentained that the third mail-car back had a roaring mail fire inside which needed immediate attention. There was much shouting and engine whistling and other excitement which caused this writer who was the Telegrapher's son aat the station at the time, to run up by the water tank and take in the show. Instead of stopping to fill up the water half of the locomotive tenter first, the engineer pulled the trail forward until the middle of the burning mail car was opposite to the spout of the water tank then he stopped the train. Several of the train-crew, including the fireman and the head brakeman and others climbed into the top of the burning mail-car, it was not so much the car itself but rather the many mail sacks inside that "sealed mail-car" which were burning rather slowly, due to lack of oxygen, which was causing so much smoke. each of the crew members on top of the mail car had either an axe or a pick or a sledge-hammer and they all were all pounding furiously trying to chop a hole through the roof of that mail-car and which they were very soon able to do and the hole was made large enough, then a dense column of smoke with some fire in it shot upward, so they quickly pulled the "spout of the water tank" down with its curved mouth directly over the hole they had cut and then they pulled "the tank-valve rope" and immediately there was a stream of several hundred gallons per minute of cold water pouring down that hole. This changed the column of smoke and fire to a column of smoke and steam which was shooting up and out of said mail-car and the crew kept this up until they had completely filled that mail-car with water and until little spurts of water were oozing from every seam of the mail-car. Next they uncoupled that water soaked mail-car from the rest of the trail and "set in out" on the back side-track and recoupled to the rest of the mail train on the main-line and took on the five-minutes of water thata they had stopped for in the first place and then they proceeded on up Promontory Hill minus "one sealed blind mail-car". All the above doings made the mail train a good 45 minutes late on its schedule. The next morning when the next mail train stopped for water they set out, next to the watered down mail car, and empty mail-car in charge of two U.S. mail inspectors. Those gentlemen opened the sealed mail-car and worked all day transfering damp mail-sacks full of mail to the empty mail-car. There were about 25 mail-sacks full of mail that were so badly burned that Inspectors dumped the mail out of them and resorted it. Most of the badly burned mail sacks contained wet second-class mail matter which they dumped down the side of the railroad grand and which was later lying around there for months. This writer, as a boy, worked away opening most of the discarded partly burned mail and got out of it quite a few pretty valentines since this episode happened shortly before Valentine's day of 1888. Several days after the inspectors left, a mail train headed west picked up the re-loaded mail car and a freight train headed east picked up the partly burned roof-damaged mail car and took it back to Ogden. This writer salvaged, along with his much prized valentines, a number of cheap periodicals dated 1888 and 1887 from said burned mail-car and still has several of them as souvenirs even to this day. The names of some of those publications were, "Crickets on the Hearth", "Saturday Night", "Ladie's World", "Cottage and Farm", and "Illustrated Family Hearld". Yours truly, "Sage of the Sagebrush Hills" W.A. Clay END