Silk Train

By Sam Churchill

Swoosh!

That was just about as close as a body could come to describing the sound of an early 1900’s silk train on its way from Seattle or Portland, Oregon, to St. Paul, Minnesota and thence to the hungry clothing mills in the East.

In their day, the nation’s silk trains were the fastest things on wheels. They roared down a clear track and their only official stops were for water, fuel and a change of train crews.

Silkers were the kings of the glory days of steam railroading. A number of railroads dealt in the highly competitive runs dating from the early 1900’s into the 1930s when synthetics began making inroads into silk, and time suddenly was no longer as vital in getting silk from dock to mill.

Emphasis in speed in the silk train days was based on several factors including perishability of the product, fragility of the market price structure, and a high insurance rate (six per cent per hour while in transit).

High-speed mail trains, freights, even those haughty elite of the rails, the luxury passenger trains including the posh North Coast Limited of the old Northern Pacific Railway, made room for the “mad steamers” out of the West.

U.S. railroads handling silk included the Northern Pacific and Great Northern (now part of the Burlington-Northern), the Milwaukee Road, Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, Canadian Pacific and a few others.

But the bulk of the silk business was from the Port of Seattle, western terminus of the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific.

The Great Northern seat the records with two record runs back-to-back.

The first on August 13, 1924, was 39 hours and 2K minutes from the Seattle unloading dock to St. Paul. The following day another Greet Northern sillier made the same run in 38 hours and 50 minutes.

The Great Northern led in the number of silk trains with some 30 or more on record between 1925 and 1932. The Seattle to St. Paul run was made with only seven stops for servicing and crew changes.

The only conceivable emergency situation that could halt a silk train was a slide, washout or derailment.

But then of course there was Fred C. Fisher. Fisher, now a retired Northern Pacific telegrapher, lives at Thorp in Central Washington.

As Fisher recalls the incident, he had put out a red board (stop signal) to halt a local passenger train and gave it orders to duck into a siding and make way for an east-bound silk train out of Seattle. Such an order was not taken lightly.

The passenger train pulled off to await the passing of the oncoming “silker.” Fred went about his many duties as a telegrapher.

Pretty soon he heard the steady roar of the silker coming full-tilt downgrade after bursting into the clear from the east portal of two-mile-long Stamped Pass tunnel that carried the N.P. rails under the crest of the Cascade Mountains.

Fred went out on the station platform to watch her screech by but instead of the ear-splitting whoosh he expected, brake shoes ground against wheels and the speeding juggernaut with its eight or ten coaches of precious cargo ground to a halt. A conductor jumped off a rear car and raced over to Fred.

What was the problem? No problem, shrugged Fred. The conductor pointed toward the semaphore. It was in a horizontal position – a red board – STOP! Unauthorized stopping of a silk train was cause for on-the-spot dismissal.

It was one of Fred Fisher’s luckiest days that the entire crew of this particular silk train knew him and covered for him. No report was ever made and Fred Fisher worked on for many more years until he earned retirement.

Seconds later the silker was on its way with a blast from its stack like the roar of a moon rocket The first silk trains were additions to other cargo and passenger trains. But as the demand for silk increased and competition was honed to a razor’s edge, speed became a vital and essential factor.

The earlier trains were unguarded but persistent rumors of possible high-jacking attempts forced the nervous railroads to add guard cars. Most silk trains consisted of 12 to 14 cars with some smaller. No silk train was ever robbed or high-jacked. Wrecks were few. The Canadian Pacific reportedly lost a silker when it left the rails on a curve and plunged into the depths of the Fraser River in British Columbia. It was never recovered.

Each bale of silk, wrapped in burlap, was worth about $1,000 and crossed the Pacific to three main ports – Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. The ports of origin were usually Hong Kong, Kobe and Shanghai.

The record for a one-engine haul was set by the Great Northern in 1925 when its engine No. 2517 in September of that year hauled an 18-car train of silk worth $5 million from Seattle to St. Paul stopping only to change crews and take on fuel and water. The following day, No. 2517 was coupled onto a mail trains for the return trip to Seattle. Total time for the round-trip was 99 hours and 45 minutes, a feat unmatched by any railroad.

Train arrivals were telegraphed ahead so that a train could be serviced, change crews and be on its way within minutes. It was not unlike a pit stop at the Indianapolis Speedway.

Most lines used baggage cars to haul the precious cargo of silk but the Southern Pacific went all out with a fleet of special cars built for the purpose.

From St. Paul, the silk was transfered to eastern lines and rushed to mills.

The Panama Canal, completed in 1914, enabled ships to carry the raw silk from the Orient to the eastern seaboard at considerably less cost than the railroads.

The canal made some inroads into the railroad’s share but speed was still pretty much the essence and nothing up into the 1930’s could match the roaring thunder of a 4-8-2 steam locomotive with a clear track ahead.

But it was the synthetics that doomed the silk trade and bought an end to the silk trains and their glory hour of man and a fire-belching machine racing across mountain and plain, challenging the second hand of a broker’s clock.

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