Grayson County TXGenWeb

Denison Daily Herald
Sunday, December 25, 1932

...P.H. (Pat) Tobin brought his chugging locomotive into Denison on Christmas Eve of 1872. He later advanced to section foreman for many years of service, and spent considerable time as a crossing flagman before his ultimate retirement Sept. 1, 1922.
Christmas Eve is a doubly important event in the life of Tobin. Denison city commissioner and retired business man, because it was on that date exactly sixty years ago that he sat at the throttle of a saucy little straight-boiler Grant locomotive that tugged the first train into Denison.
In the best of health with his eighty-second birthday coming up in March, Mr. Tobin chuckles as he recalls how he, as a Chicago tenderfoot, was sent into the frontier country by doctors for cure of a cold. He had engine experience with construction crews in the north, and had been set up as an engineer at the age of 19 years.
The Katy main line stopped at Atoka, Oklahoma when Mr. Tobin "blew in" for a job with contractor John Scullin in constructing the railroad south from that point. Work trains kept busy on the section under construction until it was completed and became part of the main line, when the construction crew pushed farther south. Mr. Tobin became an engineer on a work train that operated between the "boarding train," the base for supplies, and the "front".
In this manner, section after section of track was completed as the railroad continued toward Red River, Thus the south terminal of the main line was successively at Atoka, Crabtree, Caney, Caddo and eventually Colbert. Colbert was the end of the line for a long time while completion of the Red River bridge was rushed. Regular trains came to Colbert and turned back north while the Overland Transportation Company carried freight and passengers on into Texas.
The river span was completed and the track into Denison was resting more or less precariously on ties, laid flat on the dirt dump, by Christmas Eve 1872. Two carloads of bridge supplies were to be taken across into Texas and distributed along the line.
Mr. Tobin agreed to run the train, but conductor John Murphy wasn't very anxious, being intent on returning to the "white settlements" of Kansas. After some debating, the train puffed away for its historical trip with Mr. Tobin and fireman Herb McKelvin in the cab, Murphy as conductor, and Ed Vineyard and Con Sullivan, brakemen.
From the cab of his bouncing engine, Mr. Tobin got his first glimpse of Texas. The train crept along behind spike drivers immediately north of the present union station to make its triumphant entry into the city. Among those workmen was Larry Bohan, now 80 years old. Mr. Bohan, still a resident of Denison and one of the four survivors of those early days, was head spikeman, and in later years a section foreman. He was "as good a man as the Katy every hired" Mr. Tobin remarks.
Leaving his engine for a "once over" of the new town, which didn't take long, Mr. Tobin visited a camp of civil engineers who had surveyed the route down. Among this group, encamped near what now is Elm and Burnett, was A.H. Coffin, who is one of Denison's venerable citizens, with a long record of varied service to his credit.
It was the aim of the Katy then to continue to Eagle Pass, and while Mr. Tobin didn't know where or what Eagle Pass was, he was anxious for a run out of that point. But subsequent years changed the railroad's plans, and Mr. Tobin's too.
Completing his service with the construction company, Mr. Tobin became a regular engineer for the Katy, and again won distinction by making the first transfer of a train to the Houston & Texas Central which had forged in from the south. It was in 1873 that three train loads of soldiers were dispatched from Muskogee for the frontier.
Mr. Tobin drew the last train which continued on to Denison to be turned over here to the Central. The connecting track between the two lines wasn't completed when he arrived, and he had to wait a couple of hours until a few hundred feet of rails were hurriedly laid, before he could push the train over to the Central.
The venerable Denisonian recalls that about 150 Negro convicts, stripes and all, were at work on this task. It was the first convicts he had seen out at work and he still remembers the incident.
With considerable amusement does he recall another incident of the first transfer. Among the military equipment aboard the train were several small brass cannons which, in overland maneuvers, were carried by mules. This was dubbed the "jackass battery," and the term popped up repeatedly from the minds of railroad wits during the subsequent years.