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The
Longest Train Ride by
C. F. Eckhardt | 
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What’s
the longest train ride in the world? There are a lot of answers, of course—the
Red Express on the Trans-Siberian railway that goes from what used to be Leningrad
and is now, mercifully, once more Petrograd or St. Petersburg, near the Baltic,
to Port Arthur on the Pacific is probably the best one. The old Blue Train that
once ran from Cairo, Egypt, to Capetown, South Africa, was certainly in the running,
as was the world-reknowned Orient Express, that ran from London to Dover, then
to Calais via boat, and from there to Istanbul, Turkey. For seeming to be long
without actually being all that long, there’s a stretch of perfectly straight
track that runs for almost 300 miles across Nullarbor (which means ‘no trees,’
and it ain’t kiddin’) Plain in Australia, will probably qualify. Another candidate
has to be the original run of what is now Amtrak’s train #1, the Sunset Limited,
when in the 1920s it ran from Chicago to San Francisco via St. Louis, Memphis,
Jackson, New Orleans, Houston, San
Antonio, El Paso,
Tucson, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara on the Illinois Central, Texas & New Orleans,
Galveston, Harrisburg, & San Antonio; and Southern Pacific.
But what if
‘long’ has another meaning? What if ‘long’ means not ‘how far it went,’ but ‘how
long it took to get there?’ If that’s the case, Train #1 of the Gulf & Interstate
Railroad, which left Beaumont,
Texas, at 7:00 AM on September 8, 1900, to make the run to Port
Bolivar, about 85 miles away by modern highway, takes the prize hands down.
#1 arrived at Port Bolivar at 11:10
AM, September 24, 1903—three years, sixteen days, and ten minutes late. Some of
the original passengers were still aboard.
Now—before you start listening
for that familiar de-DEE-de-de de-DEE-de-de theme and start looking around for
Rod Serling, this isn’t a time pocket or UFO story, and it doesn’t belong on Twilight
Zone. There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for the delay. And
for some of the original passengers still being aboard.
September
8, 1900,
is a well-known date in the history of the southeast Texas
coast. It was on that morning, about 10:30 or thereabouts, that the 1900
hurricane blew in. They didn’t name storms in those days, and they didn’t
have much warning one was coming. They certainly didn’t have any idea how strong
a storm would be before it hit. The tides started to rise and didn’t recede, then
those ominous clouds turned up to the south, and coast folks knew they were in
for a blow.
How much of a blow? There was no way to know before it hit,
but the storm that blew ashore on September
8, 1900, was—as Tom Sawyer might have put it—a sockdolager. It virtually leveled
Galveston Island,
killed as many as 8,000 people—an accurate count was impossible in those days—and
destroyed much of the southeast Texas
coast from Orange to
Matagorda Bay. It continued to blow inland for several days, drenching much of
East and Central
Texas and doing property damage and killing folks as far as 250 miles from
the coast. 1900,
thanks to that mighty storm, was one of the wettest years the weather bureau had
yet recorded in the eastern half of Texas.
G&I
#1 was on High Island,
within 11 miles of Port Bolivar, when the storm surge came in. When it receded
Engine #4 and her tender were buried to the domes in sand, the baggage car had
been rolled and tumbled 500 feet across the flats, and the head-end revenue and
passenger cars were scattered from Hell to breakfast across the salt marsh. Thirty
miles of track had been swept away.
It wouldn’t have made much sense to
go on to Port Bolivar that morning, because Port Bolivar wasn’t there any more.
The ferry that took commuters from Port Bolivar to Galveston
was scattered in little pieces up Buffalo Bayou halfway to Houston.
Except for a few shattered hulls of buildings, Galveston
wasn’t there either, and neither was much else. Beaumont
was in ruins itself. The survivors of Train #1—and, surprisingly, most of the
passengers and crew survived—didn’t have much left to go home to, no matter at
which end of the line they lived.
As
soon as the storm blew itself out the Texas
coast began to dig out. Plans were laid and a huge seawall
was constructed on the Gulfward side of Galveston,
to break the force of another such massive storm surge. All up the coast, smaller
seawalls were built to prevent disasters like that from sweeping inland again.
Towns and buildings were rebuilt, bodies were recovered from the sand—some, years
later—and identified if possible, then buried. Storm widows and widowers were
a drug on the marriage market for about the next ten years. Storm orphans either
went to relatives or to crowded orphanages all across the state. A good many of
the storm-orphaned boys wound up in the Methodist Children’s Home in Corsicana
and later went on to play football at SMU.
The Gulf & Interstate, as it
turned out, was in just about the same shape as Train #1 after the blow—up to
its neck. Instead of in sand, the little railroad was up to its neck in creditors.
They wanted money and G&I, having lost 30 miles of highly-profitable track, didn’t
have any. The little road had to mine its remaining resources to pay its debts.
For almost three years Engine #4 and the rest of Train #1 stayed on High
Island, buried to the domes in sand.
Eventually the debts were paid
and G&I was in the black once more—but just barely so. The stretch of track to
Port Bolivar was still washed out. Though the road was operating above break-even,
it wasn’t far enough above it to think about rebuilding the washed-out Port Bolivar
line.
The
‘port’ in Port Bolivar’s name wasn’t there for decoration. It was—or it had been—a
thriving port. The G&I shipped inbound cargo out of Port Bolivar to Beaumont,
and outbound cargo from Beaumont
to Port Bolivar. The channel at Port Bolivar was deeper than the one into Beaumont
then, so the little town could handle bigger, deeper-draft ships. Now outbound
had to be shipped via the Texas & New Orleans to Houston,
then transshipped to the Galveston, Harrisburg, & San Antonio to Galveston
before it could be sent to sea. Inbound had to come in via Galveston,
then ride the GH&SA and T&NO back to Beaumont.
It made moving cargo destined for deep-sea ships a lot more expensive.
Port Bolivar was being strangled. To make matters worse, commuters and shoppers
coming to Galveston
from up the Bolivar Peninsula had to take the long way around as well. That was
costing Galveston
money.
Beaumont,
Galveston,
and Port Bolivar held a fund drive—bake sales, dances, concerts, the works—and
raised $20,000 to reconstruct the 30 miles of track the hurricane wiped out. In
the meantime the G&I pulled old Engine #4 and her coaches out of the sand, cleaned
‘em up, repainted and refurbished them, and got the old girl going once more.
At 7:00 AM on September 24, 1903, Train # 1, carrying much of the original
consist, pulled out of Beaumont
for Port Bolivar to complete the run it started three years earlier. G&I officials
offered to honor any punched ticket from the 1900
run that hadn’t been collected. Surprisingly, about a dozen of the original passengers
showed up, still carrying their 1900
tickets.
The September 24, 1903 run was completed in four hours and ten
minutes, without notable incident. It’s said—and I can’t prove it but it’s worth
repeating anyway--that a passenger who’d telegraphed ahead to his favorite restaurant
on the morning of September 8, 1900 to have his favorite lunch—two three-minute
eggs—ready when his train pulled in, stormed into the café three years later and
roared “Where the Hell are my three-minute eggs?” Whether that’s true or not—and
it just might be—the run of G&I #1, which began at 7:00 AM on September 8, 1900
at Beaumont and arrived
at Port Bolivar three years, sixteen
days, and ten minutes late, still stands as the longest train ride in history.
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