Texas | Columns | "Texas Tales" "The Beer Train" by Mike Cox W orking the night telegrapher’s shift at the Buda train depot south of Austin, young Hamilton Wright expected a quiet evening. In his experience, almost all nights passed that way. But things were about to come to a head, so to speak.



Around 11 p.m. word clicked over the wire in so many dots and dashes that a freight train bound from San Antonio to Austin had derailed on a curve of track at the entrance of the Bear Creek railroad bridge just south of the Capital City. Hamilton had heard the north-bound train rumble through the small Hays County town only a few minutes before the accident.



The engine and its tender had jumped the track, which in turn caused the freight cars to plummet off the bridge into the dry creek below. The engineer and fireman lay dead in the wreckage.



From his post 8 miles south of the scene, Wright listened to the wire as the train dispatcher in San Antonio ordered a wrecker to proceed from Taylor, the railroad’s division point, to the location of the derailment. In addition, the telegraph directed, all section foremen needed to gather gandydancers – railroad slang for track workers – to join the work train headed to the wreck site. The foreman in Austin received instructions to “gather everybody that would work” on Congress Avenue and hire them for the duration of the emergency.



A wreck blocking the mainline between Austin and San Antonio was bad enough, but this derailment was even worse. Not only had there been casualties, the accident had occurred at a point where temporary trackage could not be laid to divert passenger trains and other freights. On top of that, Wright knew that the refrigerated cars telescoped on each other held a liquid cargo capable of causing problems. While not explosive or toxic, a trainload of beer could be problematic.



K nown simply as “the beer train,” this particular run left the Alamo City every night laden with newly bottled beer from the Pearl and Lone Star breweries. It also carried a heavy cargo of beer in stout wooden barrels, all bound for the flourishing saloons in the Capital City and points northeastward along the line.



“Barrels rolled out and cases of bottled beer tumbled here and there, some bottles breaking but other lying invitingly to anyone near,” Wright later recalled.



Before long, word leaked out along with some of the beer that free-for-the-taking containers of the best of the brewer’s craft lay scattered around the yet unguarded train wreck.



While the railroad desperately tried to recruit men willing to work hard and long for $1.25 a day, others more than happy to expend a little effort in harvesting hops – well, the liquid product derived from the grain -- saddled their horses or raced their buggies to the wreck.



When the railroad work train reached the wreck at 2 a.m., railroadmen and the newly hired workers found a rescue party already on the scene, “party” being the operative word. Numerous barrels had been rolled off and tapped, revellers having a literal free (beer) for all, no peace officers having arrived to spoil the fun.



And it soon got worse, at least from the railroad’s perspective. Many of its newly hired gandydancers gave up their jobs on the spot, figuring they could easily drink or steal for later consumption more than $1.25 worth of beer in less time than it would take to earn the same amount in cash. As the crowd’s collective blood alcohol level began to rise with the decline in the beer supply, fights started breaking out.



“In a few hours,” Wright recalled, “the gulches and level places within a half mile of the wreck looked like a Baccanalia outrivaling anything Rome ever attempted.”



With beer-breathed drunks everywhere, some of them already sick from over-indulgence, some still quaffing the “free” booze, and others sprawled on the ground battered and bloody from fighting, anyone newly arrived to the scene must have thought a true human disaster had occurred.



Finally, Travis County sheriff’s deputies, hastily deputized area citizens and even Austin police officers arrived. Twisting arms and swinging billy clubs, they began making arrests and slowly restored order. By the time this second, figurative train wreck had been cleaned up, some 200 men had been hauled off to the hoosescow.



Working around the clock, the railroad crews had the wreckage cleared and the tracks reopened within 48 hours. While the beer could not be salvaged, those barrels which remained intact were returned to the breweries for reuse. For decades after the incident, Wright said, the area around the wreck site was covered with empty or broken beer bottles.



© Mike Cox - August 25, 2011 column

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