I’ve referred to this cool legend of the M&NA Railroad before, in two different posts, Ghost Train and Phantom Caboose.

About half-way through “The Water Cure” — the first novel in the “People of the Water” Cycle — I quote a story reprinted in at least a couple of books about the North Arkansas Line’s history. I used to tell it when I was a conductor on the Eureka Springs & North Arkansas Railway, and it was told by my friend Conductor Jim yesterday when I rode with my five year-old grandson.

It’s reprinted from, I believe, American Railways Magazine (defunct) about an incident in 1906 that you could call the Tale of the Ghost Caboose. Here’s the brief story that appeared in the magazine:

Phantom trains have long been subjects for the most exciting fiction, but it is seldom that a well-authenticated instance of such apparitions occurs. A story from Eureka Springs, Arkansas, seems to fill the bill in this particular, however.

The engineer of a passenger train was about to slow up for the water tank at Gaskins, as was his custom, when he saw just ahead a caboose with the signal lights burning. He also saw the conductor come out of the cupola with his lantern and noted the burning fusee on the track.

He yelled to his fireman. The fireman glanced out of the window, saw the caboose, grasped the reverse lever, and helped his chief to throw it over; then both men dropped down to jump. But before they could go over, the caboose vanished, and the only thing left was the charred fusee on the track.

Fireman Harrelson had such a fright that he refused to go out next morning; and although Engineer Dobbins went out under protest, he recommended Master Mechanic Dolan to have everything in readiness, as there was sure to be a wreck somewhere.

But trains ran as usual, and if there was any object in the visit of the ghost train it has not been made clear yet. The account is supplemented by the statement that Agent Braswell, of Gaskins, also saw the phantom caboose and lights from his home.

Dobbins’ fear that the spectral caboose was the harbinger of disaster was not entirely unfounded. A few years later, in 1914, a collision between a North Arkansas motorcar (essentially a self-powered coach) and a Kansas City Southern train cost 43 lives near Tipton Ford, Missouri.

How all of that plays out in the novel, I won’t spoil here!