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Gurley Story (continued)
In this era, each plantation had its own sugar
production facilities. Around 1890, Godchaux came up with the idea of
building a central facility that would serve all of his 14 plantations.
Mules could then haul the sugar cane over a system of tramways that would
radiate into the fields. Godchaux's first tramway consisted of 2 x 4s
covered with strips of iron forming rudimentary rails, and he constructed a
large sugar mill in Reserve, Louisiana.
Godchaux's collection of tramways grew quite large, and
eventually he realized he would need to convert to steam locomotion to haul
his ever-growing trains of cane. He removed the wooden tramways and laid
permanent rail lines, and in 1894, he purchased his first two steam
locomotives from Baldwin. At this time, each Godchaux plantation had its own
railroad, each with its own name: the Belle Pointe & Reserve, the Lafourche,
Raceland & Lockport, and the Raceland & Belle Pointe...
One of the very first engines, which he numbered "1,"
seems to have been built for the Belle Point & Reserve Railroad. It was a
little 0-4-4T (the "T" standing for Tank engine), and likely bore the
construction serial number 14065. It weighed about 12 tons, had a bluish
boiler made of planished iron. The cab was made of ash. The remainder of the
locomotive was painted a dark olive green, with some silver pinstripes here
and there. She had large round headlights, one near the front, and the other
on the tender deck, facing backwards, that burned kerosene. The tender sides
proudly bore the name "Belle Pointe & Reserve R.R."
This drawing shows how the engine that would one day become the
Fred Gurley looked--113 years ago. Drawing by
Preston Nirattisai
The "0-4-4" designated a locomotive with no small front
guide wheels (0), four large drive wheels (4), and a four-wheel truck, or
set of non-powered wheels, under the tender (4). Both the engine and tender
rode on the same frame, which made for a very nimble locomotive, able to
easily negotiate the undulating and tight-curved plantation tracks. This
style of engine--with the tender attached to the engine frame--was known as
a "Forney," after a prominent railroad authority of the day who expounded the
design's usefulness.
Belle Pointe & Reserve Railroad engine No. 1 was one of
six identical engines Godchaux purchased over the years. Its technical
classification--a code Baldwin used to indicate drive wheel diameter, wheel
arrangement and cylinder size--was 8-11 1/3 C. The engine and had 30"
diameter drive wheel, and cylinders that were nine inches in diameter with a
piston stroke of 14 inches. The engine was built to be fired on coal, and
she could carry 550 gallons of water in her tender. Impressive for such a
small engine, she could haul over 500 cane cars on level track.
Because Western Union and other wire services charged
by the word when sending telegrams, one could order a steam locomotive from
Baldwin by simply telegraphing a single code word that would correspond to
one of Baldwin's catalog engines. In ordering Belle Pointe & Reserve No. 1,
Leon Godchaux would have wired Baldwin the code word "Mateloos."
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Switched at Birth?
For most
of the engine's life, documented in countless official and unofficial
Disney publications, books and records, the Fred Gurley was said
to have been built for one of Godchaux's plantation lines, the
Lafourche, Raceland and Lockport Railroad (Lockport is sometimes
mis-written as "Longport"). Through a bit of detective work, we may now
be able to lay this mistake to rest.
The
Baldwin Specification Sheet for the engine is ambiguous on the subject.
It shows that there were two locomotives initially purchased by
Leon Godchaux, to the exact same specifications, and he numbered them
both "1," because each was going to be used on a different plantation
railroad. One engine would go to the Belle Point & Reserve RR; the other
would be shipped to the Lafourche Raceland and Lockport RR. Their serial
numbers were consecutive: 14064 and 14065. Unfortunately, the
Specification Sheet does not indicate which engine went where.
Allegedly, some Baldwin records indicate that that the engine bearing
construction number 14065 went to the Lafourche, Raceland & Lockport.
These records may be in error.
In Down Among the Sugar Cane, the definitive book on Louisiana sugar
plantation railroads, author W.E. Butler provides some plantation engine
rosters. He indicates that engine 14065 was built for the Belle Point &
Reserve, and that engine eventually made its way to Disneyland,
while the engine originally built for the Lafourche, Raceland and
Lockport RR was sold to the Georgia Plantation in 1951.
This sister engine--bearing serial number 14064--currently exists today, in a
private collection in California. Its tender bears the possibly mistaken
lettering of the Belle Pointe & Reserve Railroad.
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For the engine's first 15 years, come every September
and the beginning of "grinding season," the little teakettle trudged along
the rails of her 24-mile long railroad, hauling fresh-cut cane from the
fields to the mill at Reserve (the myth, oft-repeated by Disney in "official"
publications that may have had its origin in a Santa Fe magazine
article on the engine's dedication, states that the engine hauled sugar cane
to "the shipping docks of New Orleans." Sadly, this isn't true--New Orleans
is 35 miles from the Reserve plantation, and would have been far too arduous
a journey for a tiny industrial locomotive, which wasn't designed for
mainline hauling. Nothing in the historic record leads to New Orleans,
either. And, of course, with a large grinding mill at Reserve, there would
be no need to haul the raw cane to the docks for shipment elsewhere. The
story, while romantic and picturesque, seems to have sprung from the pen of
an over-zealous copywriter.)
Leon Godchaux died in 1899, but his legacy and his
plantations lived on. The independent plantation railroads under his control
were eventually merged into a railroad known as the Mississippi River Sugar
Belt Railroad, and for a time, this is the moniker the engines wore.
Engine No. 3 was a sister engine, and identical in nearly all respects, to No. 1.
Engineer Sydney Cambre is at the throttle.
The Godchaux plantations continued to expand, and more
locomotives were purchased. In 1910, little MRSBRR No. 1 was relegated to
switching duties at the Godchaux main grinding mill in Reserve, LA.
The years of toil in the humid cane fields, followed by
the pure grunt work in the yards, took a heavy toll on the once-proud little
steamer. Two electric headlights, resembling little more than tin cans, took
the place of the two graceful kerosene burners; to power the lamps, a
steam-powered electric generator was affixed to the boiler near the bell,
its exhaust pipe marring the engine's once-clean lines. Hoses sprouted from
its steam fittings, so that steam and boiling water could be used to hose
down the sticky sugar cane residue from its running gear. Her tender
lettering was changed to the simple word "Godchaux" painted in script.
Years later, the little engine simmers in the hot Louisiana sun,
demoted and draped with hoses. She's even lost her stack cap.
The engine continued shunting cars around the Reserve
mill for the next 46 years, until in 1956, it was sold as scrap metal to a
local railroad photographer and steam locomotive dealer named C.W. Witbeck.
It would sit in his field in Hammond, LA, exposed to the harsh Southern
elements for well over a year.
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