1940s KCS MEMORIES
By H. E. Huber

Some more random recollections of the KCS Spiro-Ft. Smith branch line operation during the 1940s...

In previous articles of mine published in "The Belle" I have written about the crew members stationed at Ft. Smith on the Spiro-Ft. Smith branch line of the KCS, but have said nothing about the intense dislike of each other between the head brakeman Tommy Moore and rear brakemen Bill Brown and the antics it caused. On page 5 in the Volume 8, Nos. 3 & 4 of "The Belle" there is a picture of the entire Ft. Smith-Spiro crew for those KCSHS members that have issues back this far. It looks like these two are glaring at each other in the picture!

The train crewmembers were: Dan Roberts, conductor; Bill Brown, rear brakeman and Tommy Moore, head brakemen. Bill Brown handled the switch list, that is, orchestrated how the switching would be conducted. This was very much a sore spot with Tommy Moore who all the time criticized how the switching was being done. He could do it better with fewer moves, why did Brown do it this way, etc. The only way the two men communicated with each other was through hand signals that were necessary to carry out the work. I don't ever remember them holding a conversation between them at all.

As to what caused the original dislike of each other, I never did know what it was, but whatever caused it, was going on when I first made their acquaintance and it was still continuing in the mid forties. As far as I ever knew, they never did reconcile their differences.

Bill Brown was a slender, bespectacled man with very sharp hatchet like features. He used snuff and like most snuff users, occasionally it would run down from the corners of his mouth. This also irritated Tommy Moore. I never did get close to Mr. Brown, he was very aloof. Maybe the situation between him and the head brakemen brought on this attitude, I don't know.

Tommy Moore was born and raised around Bengal, I.T. and was of Choctaw ancestry. He was not too tall and slightly rotund. He took an instant liking to me and he and Charlie Washburn, the engine watchman, were my closest KCS buddies. I always called him "Shorty." He lived on North 22nd St., which was quite a distance from South D St where the KCS had the engine servicing facilities for engine 85. He did not have a car and would not ride public transportation from work. He did ride the Twin Cities bus getting to work, but had to walk from Garrison Ave. to South D St. this was about a mile walk. He always walked home, rain or shine. His route was east on South D St to Rogers Ave., then to North 22nd where he lived. Many times I have ridden along side of him on my bicycle until 17th St. was reached where we would part company on our way home.

Conductor Roberts was well aware of the animosity between the two men and the way he handled it was to distance himself as much as possible. He took no sides, just let them do their "thing" with each other. Engineer Jack Foster was rather amused by it all. He had to move engine 85 with whatever hand signals they passed to him. He too, like Mr. Roberts, stayed out of the feud.

Sometime in the late 1940s Bill Brown went back to Heavener to take another job. This left Tommy Moore to handle the "switch list". At this time Arkansas still had the "full crew" law that required six men on a train. The train was now originating out of Heavener, OK with a five-man train crew and went back to Heavener with the same size crew^*. Most of the route was in Oklahoma which did not have the six man crew law. Mr. Moore was the only train crew member that was domiciled in Ft. Smith. When the train arrived in Ft. Smith, he made up the six-man crew as required by Arkansas law. He could now do the switching as he liked.

In the mid 1940s my visiting the KCS yards was rapidly coming to an end. I had graduated from school, had a job and did not have the time to spend in the yards like I used to. I eventually lost touch with the crew members and the KCS "doings" but I still have some mighty good memories of things that went on during the six or seven years of the early 1940s.

KCS.108

* The ICC Report No. 3499 gives us the train size crew the KCS was operating in and out of Ft. Smith in December of 1952. This report is of the head on collision between the northbound Frisco passenger train No. 704 and extra KCS 1304 south near Cedars, OK on Dec. 30, 1952. The report lists the KCS crew as the engineer, fireman, head brakeman, flagman and conductor.