The Broomcorn Express, Quarterly Publication of the Broomfield Historical Society
Vol. 4, No. 3, July–September 2024
The transition of Broomfield from a small agricultural community to a recognizable, defined town was supported by the introduction of railroad and interurban service into the Old Broomfield area. Train service enhanced accessibility from Denver and Boulder, both for passenger and freight movement.
As it turned out, although our site in the foothills might seem safer than railroads in mountain communities, there were historic train wrecks right here in Broomfield. Although eight people died in two train different wrecks on the east side of Highway 36 between 119th Place and 104th Avenue, you won’t find a historical marker to tell their story.
But why write about these calamities here? Disasters are associated with locations and time frames, just like the rest of our history. Formalizing them as part of our narrative of Broomfield history lets them be both more understandable and less random. “Every disaster can be compared to one of the past. Understanding how it fits within the context of a region, culture, and history is vital to predicting how a current disaster will impact the population and surrounding environment.”[1]
1908
Unlike the events that follow, this early incident deals not with a train wreck per se, but with a fatal pedestrian trolley car incident in old Broomfield. In an earlier article in the Broomcorn Express, we discussed the Kite Line service provided by the Denver & Interurban line between Denver, Broomfield, and towns further to the North. In 1908, Harry Patrick had just ridden the trolley from Denver to go to the Broomfield Mercantile Company, in which he was a part owner. Walking around a line of parked freight cars, he did not see an oncoming tram and was hit by the same one he had ridden to Broomfield an hour before which was now on its return trip back to Denver.[2] The elderly Mr. Patrick (age 67) was unconscious and placed back onto the same car to ride to Denver for medical attention but died before he arrived.
1909
The Broomfield Archives has a postcard that says the image that appears above was of a 1909 train wreck in Broomfield.[3] Even more tantalizing is the inscription on it that says it was at the same location as an earlier wreck. The rail connection to Broomfield was constructed in 1873, and by 1909, Broomfield had a depot with 19 passenger trains passing through each day. It is plausible that there were crashes around Old Town at that time, although I was unable to find any other supporting evidence for them. There were well-documented, serious Colorado train crashes in Colorado Springs and Dotsero in 1909, but given the distances, they would be unlikely to be confused with the Broomfield area and would not explain the advertisement for the Rocky Mountain News painted on the building behind the wreckage.
1958
On September 22, 1958, a Colorado & Southern Railroad freight train left Denver, heading for Cheyenne, Wyoming. A passenger train that had originated in Billings, Montana, was headed toward Denver on the same single-track line.[4] The plan was for the freight train to pull onto a siding and wait for the passenger train to pass—surviving crew members thought that the freight train would pull into the siding at Semper, five miles south of Broomfield (which to orient you would put it near the Guiry’s in Westminster today). Engineer Fred Tingle was experienced and had been an engineer since 1922; he slowed down near the siding at Semper, but he did not stop. A crew member in the caboose radioed the engineer, asking where they were going to try and pass the passenger train since they had already past the Semper siding, and the reply was at Broomfield (five more miles past Semper).
Although the freight train was powered by diesel locomotives, the crew in the cab consisted of both an engineer and a fireman (who was generally an engineer in training but also responsible for fueling the locomotive). Based on testimony after the accident, the fireman continued to warn the engineer that there was not enough time for the two trains to pass. The train conductor radioed the engineer to stop the train at once but was ignored. Approaching the siding at Broomfield the freight train continued on without stopping. Although the trains were quickly approaching each other, a curve in the track just south of the Broomfield depot meant that they didn’t see each other until right before their collision. Shortly afterwards, the passenger train going 20 miles per hour crashed into the freight train going 50 miles per hour.[5]
As you can see from the photos of the wreck, there was significant damage to the front of both trains. Both crew members in the passenger train were killed, as was the engineer of the freight train, and twenty passengers were injured. Clearly a tragedy but also a mystery here is why it happened given that there were multiple people trying to alert the engineer: did the accident occur because of the politics of making decisions in the freight train, or was the engineer intending to cause a crash?[6] Harry Anderson, the fireman on the freight train, said that Tingle had stayed in the engineer’s seat as the trains crashed, and although fatally wounded, he kept asking about how the crew on the passenger train had faired. Since he did not survive for very long after the crash, there is no direct testimony from him on what happened.
1985
On August 2, 1985, two Burlington Northern freight trains hit head-on, killing five crewmen along US 36, not far from the site of the 1958 train wreck. The northbound train, pulled by three engines, had left Denver while the southbound train had departed from Longmont.
The engineer of the northbound train made a scheduled stop just north of Denver and checked on when and where they would pass the southbound freight—but mistakenly reviewed information in a logbook for the preceding day. That act would lead him to believe the other train had already passed his location. As a result, he started on his way north, thinking the line would be clear. Approaching Broomfield, the tracks went underneath a US 36 overpass on a bend in the rail line, which obscured the line of sight of both trains. Given no warning, the two trains collided, going at moderate speed head-on. Although the trains were not carrying flammable cargo, the fuel in the engines ignited and caused a fire that melted the 104th Street overpass over US 36, with smoke seen as far away as Fort Collins.[7]
Today
It’s all just history and from an earlier time in railroading technology. Certainly, rails, signals, communications, and similar technologies have improved in capability and come at reduced costs and could be expected to reduce the likelihood of train-to-train collisions in the segments of rail lines that run through Broomfield. But it should be obvious from the photos that the areas along the railroad track right of way in Broomfield, starting at 122th and Old Wadsworth and heading north, then turning to follow West 120th Avenue, and then turning northeast to pass under the Northwest Parkway, have seen extensive development since 1985—many more people in live and work in close proximity to the tracks, and they would be impacted if there is another incident.
If you have passed through those areas at the wrong time of day, you know the existing track that is used by Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) freight trains today has many grade crossings (roads cross the tracks with cars driving right over the tracks) where you have to stop for passing trains. With renewed planning on the extension of the RTD B line to provide passenger service from Denver to Broomfield, Boulder, and Longmont, the old view of who and what is impacted by rail traffic should change because of development. If/when passenger rail service proceeds, it would put additional daily traffic on the existing BNSF tracks[8, 9] which, like it or not, is the same right of way that was the scene of our historic train wrecks.
Endnotes
1. Chad H. Parker, Andy Horowitz, and Liz Skilton, “’Disasters Have Histories’: Teaching and Researching American Disasters,” Organization of American Historians, https://www.oah.org/tah/february-4/disasters-of-histories-teaching-and-researching-american-disasters/#:~:text=They%20all%20agree%20that%20while,study%20disasters%20in%20the%20future.
2. Genealogy Trails History Group, “Accidents, Fires, Train Wrecks & Other Calamities News in Broomfield County, Colorado Genealogy Researching Ancestry in Colorado,” http://genealogytrails.com/colo/broomfield/news_accidents.html.
3. “1909 Train Wreck in Broomfield,” Broomfield History Collections, https://hub.catalogit.app/9352/folder/a5ef4790-48a1-11ed-9b74-fb65c00c73a7/entry/41603c00-7d8d-11ed-93c0-254efa3599a7.
4. The 1958 train wreck was the subject of an earlier Broomcorn Express article by Sandra Roberts, The Broomcorn Express, Vol. 2.2 (2022), https://broomfieldhistoricalsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/FoBH_Issue_5.pdf.
5. Sam Speas and Margaret Coel, Goin’ Railroading:
A Century on the Colorado High Iron (Boulder: Pruett, 1985).
6. Fred Frailey, “The Follies of Men: Two Disasters Wrapped in Mystery,” Trains Magazine, January 28, 2010, https://cs.trains.com/trn/b/fred-frailey/archive/2010/01/28/the-follies-of-men-two-disasters-wrapped-in-mystery.aspx.
7. Paul Gibb, “The Perfect Storm,” Boulder Weekly, January 22, 2016, https://boulderweekly.com/news/the-perfect-storm/.
8. Bruce Finley, “Could Rail to Boulder Finally Be Built? Colorado Has a Plan,” The Denver Post, February 21, 2024, https://www.denverpost.com/2024/02/20/boulder-denver-fastracks-rail-rtd-fort-collins/.
9. RTD-Denver. “Northwest Rail Peak Service Study,” October 5, 2023, https://www.rtd-denver.com/about-rtd/projects/northwest-rail-peak-service-study.