Railways to Rockets

Written by George Gilbert Lynch

When Russia launched Sputnik I into orbit on October 4, 1957, I was a brakeman on the Santa Fe Railroad. I worked on a local freight train called the Boron Local, which ran out of Barstow, California, daily, hauling borax from the mine at Boron and providing freight service to and from the rocket base and Edwards Air Force Base.

After Russia put Sputnik into orbit, the rocket center at Edwards began a massive expansion program to research, build, and test rocket engines powerful enough to put our astronauts into space. They also built test towers and test-fired most of the military missiles such as the ATLAS, THOR, MACE, and other rocket-powered missiles. Railroaders always referred to the rocket research center as “the Rocket Base.” The rocket research area is located on a series of low mountains known as Leuhman Ridge, 3 miles south of Boron and about 10 miles east of the main base at Edwards.

So many Cold War experimental projects were being carried out in the sky around Boron and Edwards during that era, I saw or heard something unusual almost every day.

My crew and I witnessed the U2 spy plane many times as it went through testing. We would hear the strange exhaust sound of a “buzz bomb” as an experimental plane flew above us, testing the German V-I pulse jet engines and, later, the ram jet engines. The first time we heard the sonic boom and looked up at an A-12 Blackbird (predecessor of the SR71 Blackbird) streaking past at over three times the speed of sound, we were astonished. Yes, we had an “E Ticket,” grandstand seat for the greatest show on earth during those days in the desert.

After 1957, freight traffic to the Rocket Base increased to a point where the Santa Fe put the Edwards Local freight into service, running daily out of Barstow, just to handle all the hundreds of tank cars; box cars; and liquid oxygen, helium, and building materials used in the conversion of the Rocket Base into a full-spectrum research facility. The Army Corps Of Engineers performed all the construction work while civilian companies performed all the technical installations. They dug miles of tunnels into the mountains to house the laboratories, research teams, and equipment. They also built many miles of steep-graded, first-class railroad around those mountains to facilitate the loading and unloading of materials.

In the 1960s, the Rocket Base began the building and testing of the most powerful rocket motor in the world, the Saturn I, which eventually launched our astronauts to the moon. This rocket motor weighs nine tons and burns kerosene and liquid oxygen at the unbelievable rate of three tons per second. The fuel flow of this motor could fill a 30,000-gallon backyard swimming pool in 10 seconds. Each motor developed 1 1/2 million pounds of thrust and five of these were on the Apollo Moon Rocket.

One warm spring afternoon in 1963, when I was a crew member on the Edwards Local, switching cars up at the Rocket Base, our crew had 12 tank cars of kerosene to leave on the storage area which was about 50 yards below a test firing tower where the Saturn I rocket motors were tested nearly daily. These motors went through more than 5,000 firing tests during the 1960s. After setting the tank cars at the fuel dock, our crew waited for a group of tank cars to be emptied so we could take them back to the Barstow yards. Conductor Willman and I were chatting when a siren rang out; we knew that a test firing was about to begin. The security personnel, in the past, had always ushered us out of an area where a test was scheduled, but this time they thought we had left the base earlier. We were directly below the testing tower.

The F1 Saturn Rocket motor in the test tower above us suddenly roared to life for its usual two and a half-minute test firing. Can you imagine what it’s like to be too close to a rocket motor burning three tons of fuel per second? Willman and I, along with other crew members, were forced into a squatting, fetal position with our hands over our ears and our mouths wide open. This was our natural reaction to such a thunderous sound accompanied by a constant, pulsing shock wave that had all the pebbles on the ground bouncing like popcorn. The pressure of the concussion on our bodies was painful but we knew we had to endure about two and a half minutes of this agony before the test was finished. Those minutes seemed an eternity but the test finally ended. It took a few minutes for us to regain our hearing and afterward, I noticed several hands trembling as they lit up cigarettes.

The crew on the Edwards Local liked the job of switching at the Rocket Base for many reasons. For one, the base soda fountain served a great lunch at a very low price. Another reason was the excitement. The steep grade of that railroad made it a challenge to switch cars and, at times, to even pull a string of loaded cars to their proper unloading area because the locomotive was unable to get enough traction. It was also a very dangerous area for handling cars because the grade, in some areas of the track, was so steep that the handbrakes on the cars weren’t sufficient to stop the car from running away.

One day in 1965, when I was brakeman on a crew that had finished most of our switching at the lower sidings of the Rocket Base, conductor Brower suggested I ride an empty helium car to the bottom of the hill and the crew would pick up the car and myself as they left the base later. The 115-ton car was one of the heaviest cars ever built. Conductor Brower pulled the pin on my car and away I went down that grade, which was about as steep as the highway over Greenhorn Summit. I wound the handbrake as tightly as I could and the heavy car just kept gaining speed. The brake on that car was practically useless and, by that time, I was around a curve and already out of sight of the crew. I had about four sharp curves approaching and I was going too fast to jump off. I hung on with a death grip and prayed the car wouldn’t roll over on those curves. I somehow made the first curves. As I rounded the final one at nearly 60 miles per hour, I could see the inside wheels rise above the rail, but the heavy helium car didn’t roll over. I then had a long, flat three-mile straightaway on which to stop the car.

These events took place over 50 years ago, but as I look back on those Cold War days of the frantic rocket building era at Edwards, I feel I performed a very small part in that great effort to put a man on the moon. My railroading experiences during that time period will always be in my memories.

Today, as I drive to Las Vegas or Laughlin, I can see the rocket test towers are still up there on the Rocket Base near Boron, and I am sure our government continues to do research in that desert mountaintop facility. However, I’m certain it will never be as active as when we went all out in the race against Russia to be the first nation to put a man on the moon.

Article appeared in our 26-6 Issue - February 2010