Next stop was oblivion for Texas & Pacific Engine 642 after it left Fort Worth in 1885

The late-winter rains of 1885 had been heavy, and on March 15 rain continued to fall, putting Village Creek between Fort Worth and Arlington in a mood: out of its banks, running high, wide and ruthless.

The 70-foot wooden bridge that carried the Texas & Pacific railroad track over Village Creek needed to be repaired. Railroad workers had reported the bridge’s unsafe condition to the company.

Despite the rain and a railroad workers strike at the time, on March 9 and March 10 a repair crew had temporarily shored up the bridge with cribs (supporting timbers). But the heavy rain hampered repair efforts, and the crew had decided to join fellow union members in walking a picket line.

By the morning of March 15 the rushing water of Village Creek, fortified with driftwood, had torn away the cribs shoring up the bridge.

That morning engineer Lyman Stacy Roach was at the throttle of T&P engine 642 as it headed east from Fort Worth pulling train 304. Roach had been a railroad man since the Civil War ended. Engine 642 was his iron horse. They were a team, man and machine.

T&P engine 642 was an “American” class locomotive, meaning it had a 4-4-0 wheel configuration: four leading wheels on two axles, four powered and coupled driving wheels on two axles and no trailing wheels. Engine 642 weighed 73,000 pounds (the equivalent of fourteen 1959 Cadillac Eldorados).

The engine was pulling its tender, a mail car, a baggage and express car, a smoker car, a ladies’ car and a sleeper car.

As engine 642 approached the bridge over Village Creek engineer Roach slowed the train to 12 mph. Now engine 642 was tiptoeing (if 73,000 pounds of iron can tiptoe). Roach peered through the rain down the track to the bridge, his hand on the air-brake throttle.

When he saw how high the creek water was — just four feet below the rails — he tried to stop the train but could not. Suddenly, with the groan and snap of failing support timbers, the weakened bridge collapsed under the weight of the engine. The engine and tender and much of the bridge plunged into the creek.

The engine was submerged in 16 feet of rushing water.

Crewmen were pulled from the water suffering injuries ranging from bruises to a crushed lung.

None of the passengers was injured.

But fireman J. G. Habeck was missing. The next day his body was found downstream from the engine.

After the water level of the creek fell and engine 642 was visible, T&P workers tried to hoist it out of the water but soon gave up, and the engine eventually settled out of sight below the surface of Village Creek.

No one has seen hide nor headlight of it in decades.

Somewhere down there in the oblivion of Village Creek, 134 years after the spring rains of 1885, Texas & Pacific engine 642 is lying low, waiting, like an iron Lazarus, to be raised from the dead.

Mike Nichols blogs about Fort Worth history at www.hometownbyhandlebar.com.