Our “Town between the tracks” inspires a Train Yard Tale
By Khevin Barnes
One of my fondest childhood memories are of those few weeks around Christmas time when my brother and I were permitted to set up the big, Lionel electric train around the tree. I still have that train in my possession after nearly seven decades, along with my fascination for railroads. Many of us in Vail can hear the trains passing through town late at night, sometimes in harmony with a lone coyote’s plaintive wail. Depending on your own nocturnal disposition and your penchant for deep sleep, a train whistle at 3:00 a.m. is either a lilting and restful lullaby or an annoying pain in the neck.
I side with those who find train whistles to be idyllic memories of childhood.
It may interest you to know that Locomotive horns are required to sound for 15-20 seconds before entering all public grade crossings, but not more than one-quarter mile in advance. The required pattern for blowing the horn is two long, one short and one long sounding horn at a volume between 96 and 110 decibels.
The first locomotive was invented in the year 1804 in the United Kingdom by Richard Trevithick, a British engineer also coined the term “locomotive”. And trains were instrumental in the creation of our town of Vail, Arizona. In 1880, the Southern Pacific Railroad laid tracks along what was once a wagon trail in Arizona. Later on a second parallel track was added giving Vail the moniker “The town between the tracks”.
Fast forward 90 years.
In early 1970 I was a 19-year-old college student living in a stately old mansion in Santa Cruz, California. The house wasn’t my own of course, but was rented by 10 fellow students who were attending the University there. I wandered in one day in response to an ad I read in the local paper for a room to rent as I had been living in my car for a week after arriving in town. The last room had been taken when I showed up but as I was touring the property I noticed a walk-in closet that had a small window overlooking the lush back yard. I negotiated a rate of $25 a month, and yes, I lived in a closet for a year. Actually I only slept in it, but sharing that house with those friends, several of whom I’m still in touch with, was one of the most memorable experiences of my youth.
I was taking a film class and wanted an interesting subject for my final movie project and, since home was just down the street from the local train yard, one of my roommates named Andy and I had the idea of hopping a freight train and recording the experience on film.
After a bit of research, we found out that a particular train left twice a week and stopped in Watsonville, about an hour down the coast from Santa Cruz. Our plan was to stowaway in an open box car, get some wonderful footage, and hitchhike back home once we reached the Watsonville train yard. That seemed easy enough.
Early one morning we packed a lunch, grabbed my wind-up Kodak movie camera and sneaked down to the train yard, looking for an open box car. There weren’t any to be found, but several open cars filled with sand were available. The sand was piled in the middle of each car, creating a dip on either end, allowing for a couple of slim adventurers to hunker down and not be seen by the engineer or the train yard guards-or so we thought.
We huddled together for the longest time before the car began to vibrate as other cars were connected to the long train. Suddenly, after several loud whistles from the engine, the train lurched and rattled and ever so slowly began to move. We were on our way.
In Santa Cruz, the train rolls down along the city beach before turning inland and after Andy and I found a perch on the top of the sand mound in our car I pointed my camera toward the curious beach-goers, some of whom were waving at the engineer. I suddenly heard my name called out. To my surprise, and most certainly to theirs, one my friends from school had spotted us sitting in the sand in that moving train.
As the train picked up speed our hearts began to race too. The scenery along the pacific coast was staggeringly beautiful, and at each railroad crossing the people in the stopped cars were hilarious to watch as they spied us sitting and waving from our sandy seat. And I had it all recorded on 8 millimeter film.
As we entered Watsonville we began to prepare for our escape from the train car and our goal of not being caught by the train yard guards. It wasn’t long before we realized that, rather than slowing down, our train was picking up speed. As you may have guessed, Watsonville came and went.
It soon dawned on us that our planning had run afoul of the train schedule and as we pulled away from the coast and headed inland, the realization that we were stuck on a speeding train, in an open car, with little in the way of provisions—began to sink in.
We rode all day. Several times the train stopped to pick up another car or two, but always in isolated places with no visible town in sight and so we stayed low in our sand car.
As nightfall approached we realized that we needed to take some action. We had eaten our lunch hours before and our light jackets would offer little in the way of comfort in an open sand car. And besides that, I was out of film.
Our train stopped again in a big yard just as the sun was setting, and seeing this as our last opportunity to find our way home, we dashed down the tracks and spotted another stopped train pointed in the opposite direction. We figured that anything heading North was a good sign. An open box car beckoned; we hopped in and the two of us huddled in a corner for warmth.
Andy and I eventually nodded out and slept a few scattered minutes, but were startled awake by a piercing light in our eyes and a gruff voice demanding, “What are you boys doing in here?”
I recall a thousand crazy thoughts percolating in my head and none of them seemed like the correct response for an amateur film maker in an old box car, on a cold night, in an unknown place, probably breaking the law.
“I’m sorry sir, I think we’re in the wrong car” was all I could utter.
We never saw the man’s face due to the dark night and the bright flashlight in our eyes. But I’ll never forget his voice. He actually chuckled ever so slightly and said, “You boys are lucky to be alive. Where are you trying to go?”
“Home to Santa Cruz”.
“We’ll you’re pointed in the right direction. This train will take you to San Jose. Stay away from these open doors or you’ll die”
That’s all he said, and then he was gone. An hour or so later the train car rattled and squeaked and we began to move. It was as cold and dark in there as I ever remember being. The night was very long. As the first rays of sunshine began to illuminate the world around us, we pulled into a big, open train yard.
Giddy with relief, we began to recount our tale to each other as my little movie started to take shape in my mind. We made our way out of the train yard, eventually finding the road that would take two weary “train hoppers turned hitch hikers” over the mountains and into our hometown of Santa Cruz where our lives could return to the relatively mundane task of being students.
At least half of my roommates back home thought that Andy and I had made up the whole story, and I can’t say as I blamed them. But in the end, we had a tale to tell that shows up even now, more than 40 years later. And I had my film which was edited without sound and turned into my three-minute final exam project.
Andy and I lost touch with each other many years back. But over those few days in 1980 we lived an adventure together that was just as crazy as it sounds, and found an opportunity to glimpse a world on rails that only the likes of hobos and vagabonds and box car journeymen can tell.
Oh, and I got an “A” in my film class.
Khevin Barnes lives in Vail and now makes movies with digital cameras on super computers while most trains, he’s happy to report, are still classic contraptions of steel wheels on steel rails.
