El Paso & Southwestern Railroad

The day ‘Polly’ made her final run on the old Dawson branch line

By Nick Pappas / May 3, 2021 / Comments Off on The day ‘Polly’ made her final run on the old Dawson branch line

For first-graders from the Forrester Elementary School in Springer, New Mexico, this was no ordinary field trip. Teachers Genevieve Hoskins and Zella Young had something more imaginative in mind for their young charges that day than a traditional visit to a historical site or museum: A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make some history of their own.…

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The story behind Dawson Railway’s deadly derailment of 1922

By Nick Pappas / January 31, 2021 / Comments Off on The story behind Dawson Railway’s deadly derailment of 1922

Poor Frank Hinds never saw it coming. A longtime engineer for the El Paso & Southwestern Railroad, Hinds had no reason to suspect anything but a routine run when he pulled out of Dawson with carloads of coal ticketed for his hometown of Tucumcari. After all, trains had been making this 132-mile trip over the…

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