California Historical Society Quarterly/Volume 22/More about Railroading in California in the Seventies

More about Railroading in California in the Seventies

The Fire Train From the Reminiscences of Clarence M. Wooster

DURING the summer of 1878, 1 was promoted and given charge of Summit station, which automatically made me one of the crew of the snowplow and of the fire train— a responsible position with a good salary for a kid of twenty. Carrying with me a telegraphic outfit, I would cut the wire and open the telegraphic communication when there was a fire, or when the plow jumped the track or encountered other diffi- culties which blocked the road. We "batched" in comfortable quarters adjoining the office. Lou Banvard, the night operator, and Sam Jacobs, the Western Union line supervisor, and later Charley Shearer, washed the dishes while I acted as chef. We had almost everything which we were capable of preparing and eating, including the delicious frozen oysters that then were available, the best of beef from Joe Marsden's Truckee shop, Mohr and York's "Our Taste" hams and bacon. Booth & Company's gro- ceries, and a bread basket thrice weekly from Sacramento. Our total living cost was but twelve dollars a month for each person. That was before hidden taxation had spread its insidious toll over all the food and raiment of man- kind. A three-story, frame hotel, conducted by Jim Card well, adjoined the Summit office. The roofs of the flat sheds extended to the second floor, over a distance of forty feet. Their tops afforded a very delightful promenade down along the side of Summit Valley and gave to the hotel a well shaded foreground which served pleasingly as a lounge. Summer guests came from the Bay cities, Sacramento and other sources, seeking the cool and refreshing air of that altitude.

This helped to relieve the monotony. However our duties were quite exacting, particularly because of the fire alarm gong, beyond whose sound we dared not venture. The shining little engine, "Bald Eagle," and the three tank cars stood in front of the office. The big gong would strike a box number which indicated the location of the fire. I would rush to the engine and blow five short blasts of the whistle, and the crew and track men would stampede to the train. Within a minute the train would start. He who missed getting aboard had an account to settle with the "Old Man." The train, built to hug the track which was graded for a maximum speed of twenty- five miles an hour, would roll around those ten-degree curves at a rate as high as fifty-seven miles an hour— a veritable demon whose smoke stack would

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now and then strike the side of the shed, spreading terror to all hands. This unpretentious pen cannot portray with any degree of adequacy a ride to a snowshed fire on that demon train. Wildly rushing at an outlawed speed, closely confined inside a narrow housing, in constant curvature which reduced visibility to a hundred feet, we placed our trust in God. On a watch depended the certainty of calculations that would avoid a crash into another train, coming or going, or a section gang's car loaded with ties or rails or with the men of the gang. Then there was always danger of running into another fire. Necessarily the fire train ran wild; no schedule protected its right of way to the track.

The family of Superintendent Jerome A. Fillmore spent a summer at the Summit Hotel, and he usually was with them on Sundays. He was playing croquet back of the hotel when the gong rang Box 27. That was Twenty- seven woodshed where a mountain of wood was stacked up adjoining the sheds for winter use. Hearing the gong, Fillmore rushed to the train and, in the effort to get his coat on while running, fell. He yelled for us to wait for him. But Fitzgerald, the engineer, said, "We can't wait for anybody." He did, however, slow down, and the superintendent managed to get aboard. Weighing three hundred pounds, he laboriously climbed up to the fireman's seat in the little cab. By the time he got there we struck the curve at the west end of the Summit yard, and Fillmore was thrown half way through the window. Only his size prevented him from being thrown from the cab. Passing Soda Springs, a similar curve rolled him out over the edges of the broken glass, when he was brought to the realization that his foot was burning against the boiler head. We got him down on the iron floor of the cab and hastily pulled off his boot. "What place was that?" "Cisco," I answered. "Where is the fire?" he yelled. "Twenty-seven woodshed," I answered. "Great God!" exclaimed Fillmore. His facial expression would be envied by the most ardent tragedian. His left side was a mass of blood- stains. We reached the fire before he had gained composure for the journey. Three streams, each of which would knock the planks off the sheds, were at once put into action, and the progress of the fire was soon stopped. Gale's Blue Cafion train had stopped its progress on the west. Between was a raging holocaust fed by a thousand cords of closely laid, pitch-pine wood. Black smoke rose up several hundred feet and broke out in great blazes of fire. The rails coiled up like broken spiral springs.

Fillmore hobbled out some distance and sat on a flat rock nursing his wounds. Toward evening he returned to Summit on an engine detached from a stalled freight train. Both fire trains poured streams of water on that mass of coals for forty hours. Not until the track men had relaid fifteen hundred feet of track was traffic resumed. The fire trains returned to their stations.

We were a dilapidated looking crew of men, on arriving at Summit. Mr. Fillmore and his family were seated in front of the hotel, his foot bandaged and resting on a chair, and his arm also bandaged and in a sling. As I passed him, he returned my salute, with a compliment for the crew's work. Mrs. Fillmore remarked, "Jerome, just look at the condition of those men. If you ever go to another fire on that train I'll get a divorce." Fillmore replied, "If only for that reason I assure you we will never be divorced."

THE AUTHOR

Clarence Marshall Wooster was born at Altaville, California, on Decem- ber 17, 1858, the son of a 'forty-niner, John Marshall Wooster, and died in San Francisco on June 10, 1939. Several months before his death he placed with the California Historical Society a typewritten copy of his reminis- cences, and from that volume excerpts have been published from time to time in this Quarterly. These articles are to be found in Vol. XVIII (March, June, and December 1939) and Vol. XX (June 1941).