Phantoms of the Rails

Unlike miners, who were never haunted by the ghosts of deceased hoisting engines or shaft pumps, railroad men were sometimes visited by phantom locomotives and even entire trains. Where a mass of metal derives its "spirit" is beyond the imagination of learned psychics, yet many an expired engine reappeared on the tracks, and many an engine that never existed also popped up to pass the time of day. One story of such an engine was told by Nelson Edwards, an engineer on the Denver & Rio Grande line over Marshall Pass in the early 1880s.

For several months Edwards had been pulling passengers over the pass without interference from the corporeal or spiritual world, but one night as he approached the divide, he imagined the night to be blacker and the air to be sharper and the silence to be more foreboding than usual. An earlier report of a defective rail and hazardous bridge only fueled the engineer's unnamed anxiety.

Leaving the first line of snowsheds, Edwards heard a whistle echoing somewhere among the ice and rocks. At the same time, the signal sounded in his cab to apply the brakes. He pulled the train to a stop, but the conductor yelled at him.

"What did you stop for?" asked the conductor, a bit annoyed. "Get her moving. We've got to pass Nineteen at the switches, and we won't make it unless you pull her open and light out of here."

Edwards threw the lever, sanded the track, and got the train under way again. He heard the strange whistle behind growing louder, sounding danger signals. As he turned a curve, the engineer looked out the cab window. A wild train was climbing fast behind him at a rate certain to end in collision. He pulled the throttle wide open, and the cars lurched through a snow drift and on through the next shed, where the defective rail had been reported. He had to chance the rail; a greater danger threatened behind. He yelled to the conductor to warn the passengers who, upon hearing word of the approaching train, anxiously watched out the windows, believing the rear train was driven by a madman.

When the summit of Marshall Pass was cleared, Edwards shut off steam and allowed gravity to drive the train down the west slope. At another curve he looked back at the pursuing engine, noticing a tall man standing on top of the cars and gesturing frantically. The other train was only 200 yards behind. Edwards could see the engineer leaning out the window with a vicious grin. The stranger's face was broad and flat with a bizarre expression.

The trains were flying close as Edwards approached the dangerous bridge. The engineer thundered across it without any trouble, but the other train was closing in. Coming to the switch, Nineteen was nowhere in sight, and Edwards shot by, but suddenly a red light appeared ahead swinging on the track.

"With that wild train at my rear and some unknown danger ahead," said Edwards, "I was in a hell of a dread. As I put on the brakes I heard the other train's whistle and then no sound at all."

He shot a glance back. At that moment the pursuing train seemed to run against his rear, yet at the same time it toppled from the track down the bank and vanished into the canyon.

"It made me sick," related the engineer. "I heard no cry of injured men or no sound of steam, just the wind in the rocks. The red lantern disappeared too."

Edwards pulled into town ahead of schedule, having no more interference along the road. A weird message was scrawled in the frost on his cab window: "A freight train was recked as yu saw. Not that yu will never make another run. The engine was not under control and four sexshun men wor killed. If yu ever run on this road again yu will be recked."

Being both sensible and superstitious, and apprehensive of misspelled messages, Nelson Edwards resigned the Denver & Rio Grande that morning and took employment with the Union Pacific. The wrecked train he reported was never discovered, not as much as an air-cylinder gasket from it, and word got around that the train was a phantom. . . or Engineer Edwards was suffering from high altitude. The phantom train never again appeared on Marshall Pass.

© Article copyright Pruett Publishing.