DOUGLAS IN THE 1950'S

I was fortunate to have enjoyed photography as a youth.  That coupled with the need to be near trains as much as possible led to being able to have caught on film one of the great era's in railroading, the transition from steam locomotives to diesels that took place in the early 1950's.  Now, Douglas was not the center of the railroad universe.  But it was a Southern Pacific crew servicing point and junction for a line coming up from the mines at Nacorazi, Sonora, so we did have a lot of things to look at.  Most of the freight traffic served the local copper smelter, but at that time the SP ran most of its passenger trains through Douglas on what was called the South Line, the old El Paso and Southwestern line from Tucson to El Paso.  So I was often there on Saturday's and Sunday's, camera in hand to watch the comings and goings, to wander in the yard or engine service facility, or just to hang out around the station (and probably annoy the staff there).  No, you could probably never do that today.

Here is a selection from  the photos I took during those wonderful days, courtesy of my J C Higgins bike and a Kodak Brownie camera.

This is probably how it all began.  Visiting relatives at about the age of ten, we stopped at the same Long Island Railroad station near Sea Cliff where my father brought me as an infant - to pick up my grandfather coming from his office in Manhattan.  It is now 1950, but this scene must have been just the same as in late 1939 and early 1940 - except for perhaps the "modern" car.  The steam train still came, puffing and chugging.  Wish I had waited another minute to let the train get closer, though.

The original American Freedom Train made a stop in Douglas in 1948 and my mother took my sister and me to see it.  I remember the dark insides of the cars and row and row of old documents inside glass cases.  My mother told me how important they were, but to me, the trip to see the train was enough.  If I remember, my sister was bored with both the train and the exhibits.

That is the magnificent Douglas WMCA behind the train and the track it is on is where the original Douglas train station and freight house was located.  It led to the Mexican border and the connection with the SP of Mexico line to Nacozari.

This is one of my earliest photos and I just hit it just right.  It remains one of my favorites.  It shows one of the 5000 series SP 4-10-2 steamers heading west with a freight train.  These huge, three cylinder locos were the largest steam power that ran out of  Douglas except for an occasional wandering Cab Forward.

You could not mistake the sound of a 5000 with its three beats of exhaust.  The front end was distinctive with its flattened boiler front.

Secondary passenger trains were all heavyweight and steam powered.  The SP almost always powered them with de streamlined Daylight GS class locos.  Even in black and silver, these were beautiful locomotives.  In those days it was also not unusual to see run through passenger cars, and I delighted in taking photos of  Texas and Pacific, Southern Railway and even occasionally a Pennsy passenger car.

From the first time I saw one, I thought the Southern Pacific's skyline shrouded Mountain class MT locomotives to be one of the most handsome of steam locos.  They rarely showed in Douglas and I was happy to be able to get a shot of one.  This was my traditional train watching location at the east end of the station where locomotive watering and servicing took place.  The railing in the foreground is for a stairway to the highway underpass on US 80, the main road through town.  It was a local landmark, but after abandonment of the rail line, it was torn out.  Local protests still were able to delay the demolition for several years until the highway department offered enough landscaping and other features in the new road to satisfy the local folk.

As I became more experienced in shooting trains, I would ride my bile away from the station and yards a bit to try to catch them at speed.  Here is a 5000 steamer accelerating eastward towards El Paso

We tend to forget how labor intensive steam era railroading was.  As a kid, it was just normal to see several men working the local switching runs.  The switch engines used in Douglas were always 2-8-0 Consolidation types.  Reading up on them in later years surprised me that most were built in the first decades of the 20th Century.  To me, they just looked like regular steamers.  Actually, this one sports a waleback tender, which I always thought was the most ugly tender ever built.

Every so often we got lucky and a streamlined Daylight loco would show up pulling one of the secondary passenger trains.  Here one on the westbound Imperial with the local staff greasing the running gear and checking fluids.

They were beautiful locomotives, but looked a bit out of place pulling a long string of pullman green cars.  The black and silver de streamlined versions of the GS locos seemed more at home pulling a heavyweight train.

I slowly learned that objects like semaphores framing a shot added to its visual appeal.  Here is another ubiquitous 5000 steamer heading east.

Diesels arrived in Douglas in the middle '50s, much later than elsewhere.  Steamers still did all the local switching, but classic Black Widow F-7s started arriving on the lead of the Imperial.  These were from the SP's initial order for diesels and some were geared for passenger service.

It made great train watching as the train came in from the east steam powered and the diesel was put on in Douglas.  The steam road engine then laid over until the eastbound #40 arrived.   You can just see the smudge of the smoke from the steamer above the cab of the diesel.

Unfortunately, this exchange lasted only a few months and soon all the road steamers disappeared.  The local steam switchers stayed until the end, however.

They were new, they were clean, they sported headlights all over them and I thought the new diesels were neat.  We saw early GP's, SD's, FM's and Baldwins.  It seemed like the SP bought every manufacturer's offering and they all showed up in Douglas.  I even caught a shot of the Fairbanks Morris demonstration Trainmaster laying over at the engine house.  This is a pair of GPs in Black Widow paint scheme heading west towards Bisbee.

My definitive youthful train experience was a series of three trips from Douglas to New York City to visit relatives.  The train we took was the Golden State to Chicago, connecting on the same car with an anonymous New York Central train to Grand Central Station.

The trips were taken from 1944 to 1949, but memories of that travel onboard live with me still.  On our first trip, the train had not been converted totally to streamlined equipment and I can remember wandering through the dark, cool open section sleepers ahead of our Pullman.  My early collection of railroad timetables started on these trips.  Oh, if I still had them.

In 1950 the SP streamlined the entire Sunset Limited with great fanfare.  I don't remember the train previously, but it was probably not any different looking than the other heavyweight passenger's that ran the rest of the time.  But, to me, this became the prettiest train ever.  Often pulled by stunning Alco PA's and with all fluted stainless steel cars sporting a red letter board, it was a perfect complement to the blue Arizona skies.

For this photo, this young Mexican fellow was crossing the tracks to his home and when he saw me taking pictures, insisted I take one of him.  But when I spotted him in front of the engine, he got shy and covered his face as the shutter clicked.

Train time was not just watching the engines and cars.  Douglas also was the location of a wrecker train.  I never saw it move, but just the sight of the crane spoke of power.  I had one for my Lionel set by that time and really appreciated the sight and size of the real one.

Accompanying crew cars were old wooden pullmans and were great for wandering through with a friend of mine who lived near the station.

Railfanning on the West Coast

Everywhere East of Arizona

Toledo Days

The Rest of Arizona

Home      Trains      Railfanning