San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
‘Great Little Train Robbery’ was 50 years ago
If you’re reading this and grew up in San Antonio or have children who grew up here, you might think the San Antonio Zoo Eagle has been chugging through Brackenridge
Park since time immemorial, like the San Antonio River it crosses.
In fact, younger baby boomers are the first generation to remember taking rides on the miniature train, a park concession proposed to the San Antonio City Council in 1956 and installed in 1957. G.L. Smith was the first concessionaire granted a lease to run the train, with an agreement to share 10 percent of the gross income with the city.
The train, which in its first years resembled a modern diesel locomotive and cars, ran along a 3.2-mile (soon enlarged to 3.5-mile), one-fifth-scale track around the park and gave visitors a preview of some of its neighboring attractions, such as the Witte Museum, Sunken Garden Theater and San Antonio Zoo.
From the start, the train’s half-hour route has been popular with children at birthday parties, courting teen couples and tourists who appreciated a chance to sit down and cool off.
Charming and beloved as the miniature train is — chances are pretty good it appears in photo albums all over the world — there has been some trouble on the tracks. Sketchy youths have flipped lit cigarettes onto passengers in the open cars, an out-of-control automobile once plowed into the side of the train near the Mulberry Avenue entrance to the park, floodwaters have stranded the train at its two river crossings more than once.
And, perhaps most unforgettably, the train was robbed 50 years ago.
On what was then known as the Brackenridge Eagle Line, the train, “Old No. 99” — given an Old West atmosphere by its 19th-century replica locomotive — was approaching the eastern leg of its run about 1 p.m., July 18, 1970. It was almost full, carrying 75 passengers, mostly family groups from out of town.
As soon as the train cleared a tunnel just south of the Witte, those aboard saw two masked men jump out of the high, thick brush that screened the spot from traffic on Broadway, about a block away. The men demanded the engineer stop the train, one of them waving a handgun.
Questioned later, some of the passengers said they didn’t believe it was real. After all, this was an excursion jaunt, not a cargo train carrying sacks of payroll cash or ingots for bank deposit. The young men might have been part of some oldtime fun, like a Wild West show.
The two young men, visibly nervous, moved along the cars, holding the gun to adult male passengers’ heads and demanding their valuables. Most acquiesced and dropped their wallets, purses, car keys, checkbooks and credit cards into the robbers’ white laundry bag. A male passenger laughed; one of the robbers grabbed him by the neck when he refused to turn over his wallet but released him without taking anything.
When they were done, the pair took off and the 24-year-old train engineer, Walter Lucas — who was new to the job — quietly reached into his back pocket and took out the walkie-talkie he’d been told to use in emergencies and called for help.
The robbers were gone by the time police arrived. Passengers gave officers a vague description of the thieves: young, lean and white, with green eyes. One was a bit taller than 6 feet; the other a little shorter. Both were wearing “hippie moccasins.”
Mostly tourists in town for a few days or Saturdayafternoon day-trippers from Austin, Del Rio, Houston and other cities, the passengers had been relieved of cash from $4 to $135. Some had hung onto money kept in their shoes, and others hadn’t been approached at all by the twitchy young robbers.
Acting on a tip from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division, San
Antonio police made arrests 10 days later in what was said to be the first train robbery in the West in 47 years. According to a representative of the Southwestern Railroad Historical Society, the last train robbery was in 1923, a Missouri-Kansas-Texas train near Okesa, Okla.
The two robbers were soldiers stationed at Fort Sam Houston. One of them, James R. Brown, 24, of Allegheny, N.Y., was arrested at the apartment they shared at 106 Chinaberry Court on the morning of July 28. His partner in crime, Paul Edward Smith, 21, of Corpus Christi was picked up on post. They were charged with robbery for the train heist, and Smith also was charged with an earlier robbery of the Lone Star Ice and Food Store at 3819 West Ave.
At the apartment, just a couple of blocks away from Brackenridge Park, San Antonio Police Department
detectives found a ski mask and a pistol. Once in custody, the robbers cooperated with police, leading them to a brushy area in Northwest Bexar County, where “city detectives recovered a dozen purses and two cameras taken from passengers,” according to the San Antonio Express, July 29, 1970.
Smith’s share of what has become known as the “Great Little Train Robbery” was $130 in cash, and Brown took $170. Adding in the value of the cameras, “the total worth of the loot was estimated at about $500.”
The men told police the caper started in the park with a chance remark: “Hey, let’s hold up the train!” That led to some planning, including where to park a getaway car, how to protect their faces and what weapon to use (a .22-caliber pistol), as well as where to stage the holdup to escape notice.
Early in 1971, the perpetrators were tried separately in state District Judge Preston Dial’s court.. Both entered guilty pleas, asked for probation and instead received 10-year sentences. For the solo icehouse robbery, to which he also pleaded guilty, Smith received and served a second 10-year sentence concurrently.
Brown appealed on the grounds that he wasn’t told he wouldn’t get probation if he pleaded guilty, but his appeal was turned down.
After the conclusion of their trials, each was discharged from the Army.
The miniature-train robbery is one of those unique moments in San Antonio pop culture history that never loses its appeal. Not much more than two years after it happened, students from Jay High School staged a mock robbery of the train to collect money to fund a Christmas shopping trip for needy children, according to the Express, Dec. 17, 1972.
What goes around, comes around: The train is still running, now to the benefit of the San Antonio Zoo. Hit hard by loss of revenue caused when it was forced to closed its gates because of the novel coronavirus, the zoo plans to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the “little train robbery” Saturday with a new restaging as a fundraiser.
Each trip around the park from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., will feature costumed re-enactor/educators “holding up” passengers with bubble guns to ask for donations. Audio playing on the train will tell the story of what happened July 18, 1970. Timed tickets are $10 per person; to make reservations, visit sazoo.org.