The crest of the flood was reached about 6 AM July 13. The river rose above the high bank on the
south side and poured over through the SANTA FE shops and the adjoining residential district into
Shunganunga Creek only to rejoin the river at Tecumseh. Water was two to four feet deep all over
the extensive shop plant and heavy black oil from a tank somewhere near the work equipment shop
(formerly the locomotive shop) floated out on flood waters and was plastered liberally all over the
residential district. SANTA FE's Motive Power Building at the shops had its basement flooded and the
erstwhile pretty green lawn around it was as black with the oil as though it had been painted on with
a brush.
At SANTA FE's Fourth Street yard the new modern station was temporarily threatened and the
upholstered waiting room seats were taken up and stacked on platforms above the floor, but this
proved unnecessary and the water did not quite reach the building.
After the brief flurry with Shunganunga Creek early in the week MISSOURI PACIFIC had no more
trouble with flood waters in Topeka, but in places such as Osawatomie and Ottawa on the Marais des
Cygnes (Osage) River there was plently of trouble. A washout near Lomax halted service on the Topeka
Subdivision from July 10 to July 17, but MISSOURI PACIFIC was the first road to resume service
into Topeka after the flood.
On Friday July 13 a man standing on an upper floor of a Topeka office building saw the SANTA FE
bridge give away, and three engines, 1035 tender 1055, 3167 tender 4083 and 4076 tender 4076 fell
with it into the turgid waters. The man said a "puff of smoke" came from the stack of one engine
(soot from the smokebox forced out by the in rushing water). The bridge folded in a "V" shape
downstream as it collapsed when a pier washed out from underneath.
The ROCK ISLAND bridge collapsed in much the same way, though more slowly. Several
ROCK ISLAND and foreign cars went with the bridge to the bottom of the river.
Later both bridges were repaired with temporary pile trestles until the spans could be replaced.
That same day, July 13, ROCK ISLAND 2-8-0 1961 sat under steam beneath the Topeka
Boulevard viaduct for several hours while a radio announcer worried about it to an already
over-anxious public.
"There's an engine down here under the bridge," he said during an on-the-spot broadcast, "....no one
seems to know anything about it....we're afraid it's going to blow up."
It didn't blow up, however, and it happened that the crew knew all about it and also what they were
doing with it.
On July 14 it was reported that SANTA FE's tiny station at Tecumseh had floated down the track
about a quarter mile and had come to rest near milepost 48 (from Holliday, Kan.).
Then followed the long wait for the water to go down and afterward the even longer heartbreaking
task of cleaning up and repairing the damage.
UNION PACIFIC's track was washed out, torn, twisted--the subgrade gone in many places, the
131-lb. rail almost tied in knots, the ballast buried deep in heavy, foul-smelling, gooey mud that
covered everything over a foot and a half deep. The two-stall enginehouse had been in twelve feet of
water; the passenger station had had nine feet inside. But North Topekans patiently shoveled the mud
out of homes and businesses, the railroads shoveled out too. Mud stuck to shovels like glue, it
required considerable effort to lift a shovelful. As one worked in it he soon became spattered from
head to foot.
Railroad signaling was almost nonexistent as the roads worked feverishly to get the lines opened.
SANTA FE men replaced interlocking machinery that had been moved from Second Street tower
before the flood. Men of other lines, as well as SANTA FE, worked around the clock to restore
shambled communications both east and west of Topeka.
SANTA FE kept M-119 carrying passengers between St. Joseph and Meriden and Alco 1600-hp.
road-switcher 2101 kept the freight shuttling up to the edge of the devastation. One man's new
house floated to rest on the Atchison District right-of-way, one corner athwart the rails.
The following Union Pacific engines were caught in the flood at Topeka and are listed in the order
in which they were cleaned up and returned to service. 316, 319, 1919, 201, and 9045.
UNION PACIFIC hastily shopped 2-8-0 221 at Kansas City and sent it to Topeka for switching as
soon as the line was open. Most of the stencils at the Kansas City shops were lost so 221 showed up
in Topeka completley black except for 221 in numbers 3 or 4 inches high on the cab and on the rear
of the tender.
For almost a year SANTA FE work trains shuttled back and forth to fill in holes in the river bank
near Spencer and Grover where track was washed out and left dangling in mid-air.
Trains were running again--over shoo-fly track in places, but running. And something like on time.
Businesses and people flocked back to North Topeka. Life began going on again and some day you
won't be able to tell that we had a flood. And where life goes on the railroads go on. Worse things
than the flood have failed to stop railroading around the world, and Topeka got a chance to prove that
it was the same way here. --(The End)
