06) The year 1894

1894 proved to be a both a year of growth and disaster for the railroad.

During 1893 the A&SE was in negotiations with the NM&A and it's parent, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe over rate adjustments. An apocryphal and often repeated comment made by an ATSF official, that “... the NM&A was not being run for the benefit of the Copper Queen...” was not well received when Dr. Douglas and the Phelps Dodge partners heard of it. During March 1894 Ben Williams and engineer C. L. Beckwith looked over the 20 miles along the San Pedro north from Fairbank to the connection with the Southern Pacific.

Bisbee was still booming in early 1894. Men were showing up daily looking for and usually finding work, the Customs Service moved their office from Tombstone to Bisbee, the large “Doby House” had been sold by the Neptune Mining company to the Copper Queen and was in the process of being renovated by the new owner. Across the tracks at the mines, the foundations for the extension of the Copper Queen smelter were already in place by the end of February.

A view toward Bisbee in 1894.

The Copper Queen Mine & smelter are to the left

and the town just beyond.

In an unexpected move, May 12^th,, 1894 saw 8 14-mule teams hauling Copper Queen copper from Fairbank to Benson and lumber on the return, bypassing the NM&A entirely. The number of mule teams rapidly increased the amount of lumber being hauled to Fairbank, with the desire to have 1,250,000 board feet of timber on hand in Fairbank before the summer rainy season, now locally known as the monsoon, began in earnest in late June and early July.

The railroad's third locomotive, and the second new one for the railroad and like #2 was manufactured by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was put into service on May 30^th.

Number 3 was a Vauclain compound Consolidation (2-8-0) and was in fact the 14,000^th locomotive Baldwin constructed. The Vauclain compound design was an idea to reuse the steam by sending it through a second set of cylinders at a slightly lower pressure before it was exhausted out the stack. This was purported to be a more efficient design, reducing water consumption, but in use increased friction and wear negated any savings claimed of the design. The experiment with compound locomotives on the A&SE began and ended with #3. It is likely further research will reveal she was converted to a standard set of cylinders like many other compounds.

The design proved its worth that day however, for on that first revenue run from Fairbank to Bisbee, #3 pulls 8 freight cars and one coach, 3 more freight cars than the five that #1 usually pulled.

This illustration of another railroad's locomotive clearly shows the additional larger,

low pressure cylinder of the Vauclain Compound design

By the time #3 started it's career with the A&SE, plans and preparations are well under way for building the extension to Benson and a direct interchange with the Southern Pacific. On June 22^nd, 1894 grading crew departed Benson southward towards Fairbank to avoid shipping any supplies on the NM&A. This was just 2 days after the contract to build the railroad extension was awarded to the construction company. Unsurprisingly this was once again the Ward & Courtney company.

Construction proceeded southward slowly, at first due to wash outs along the Texas & Pacific holding up supplies and equipment and then a Pullman strike which made train traffic erratic for a few weeks. By mid-July the 250 Ward & Courtney workers had completed 4 miles of track, starting at a interchange with the Southern Pacific near their Benson depot and just west of the NM&A interchange.

For many miles the new A&SE roadbed went in as a parallel route to the NM&A, but taking a different path up the river bank. At other places the two roads were literally side by side where the river squeezed up against that bank.

Eventually the NM&A, being built 12 years earlier, took the more gentle grade on the east bank of the river , so the A&SE had the western bank. However, this was a more difficult bank to build on and construction was paused for a short time while the 150ft trestle at California Wash, about 12 miles south of Benson was being constructed. Once completed, the railroad made it's own crossing of the river just north of Fairbank and then immediately crossed a junction of some sort with the NM&A just west of the remains of the Grand Central Mill. The first work train from Benson reached Fairbank on September 27^th, 1894, the day after that main bridge across the San Pedro just to the north was completed.

During the monsoon, southern Arizona experiences powerful thunderstorms that can drop a few inches of rain or more over an area in a short period of time. While this may not be much for some parts of the United States, it is a lot for the desert, where 12 inches of rainfall is just about all that reaches the ground over an entire year! The land is bare rock or soil that is sun baked and can't readily take up the rain quickly enough. There is little vegetation to absorb this runoff as well, so flash floods are common. If it has been raining for a few days, the soil can no longer absorb any water and the flash floods can grow to frightening and disastrous proportions. To this day, people are killed every summer in flash floods roaring down washes.

As if the construction of the extension to Benson and the hauling of material by mule train from there to Fairbank was not enough activity for the little railroad to deal with, heavy rainfall on August 5^th, 1894 caused widespread flooding and multiple deaths. Bisbee lost four houses and a horse was drowned. The A&SE lost 100 feet of roadbed in a washout near Fairbank and additional 1.5 miles was washed out along with a 45 foot bridge 11 miles south of Fairbank. At both of these washouts the roadbed was repaired or moved higher on the river bank, now that high water marks had been established. The construction crews had setbacks too. One cut was so filled with mud that it is said you never would have known that there was a cut there in the first place. All of these problems and a multitude of smaller ones were forgotten once they were overcome. In all they only caused a delay in the opening the extension by about two weeks. Considering the amount of damage, the rapidity of the repairs were no doubt in part due to having railroad construction and bridge building crews already working on the property!

The people of Bisbee cleaning up their town after a serious flood in the middle of town in 1890.

It looks like Miners Restaurant escaped enough damage to remain in business!

Another image of the damage in Bisbee during a flash flood in the summer of 1890.

Flash flooding takes many lives and causes large amounts of damage even to this day throughout southern Arizona!

While most of the cutting and filling along the Benson extension was complete, a Ward & Courtney crew was still working a cut near Contention. In mid-August one carelessly powerful blast damaged or destroyed three of New Mexico & Arizona's cars that were nearby and threw their mainline out of alignment! Since the relationship between the two railroads was already contentious at best, this event could not have been well received by the NM&A

This wasn't the only accident around that time. The image to the left is a small mention of an accident in Benson yard from the September 30th, 1894 issue of the Tombstone Epitaph.

After the work crews made the connection with the rest of the A&SE at Fairbank, the management couldn't resist running a few trains over the new extension before it was open. It was only a few more weeks before the bridge builders were finished and satisfied with their work and the new extension turned over for operation by construction crew in early October.

At the end of construction the new extension was 19.1 miles long, and brought the railroad to a total length of 55.3 miles. It had been estimated that it would take 7321 rails (probably 28 feet in length), and that it would require 55,000 ties. In the end the number of rails was exactly right, but the number of ties was off by 30!

In the same issue of the Tombstone Epitaph there are a few other comments about railroading in the San Pedro River Valley. In fact we find an accounting of the very first train run between Fairbank and Benson on the Arizona & South Eastern before regular operations along the new extension began.