Engine 786 – When Will We See You Again?

It was 1996 when we first set eyes on the land that is now the location of our home. There was a very small ad in the real estate section of the Austin American Statesman talking about acreage along the river. Our interest was piqued and we made the drive out past Leander along highway 183.

We followed the directions and found ourselves driving a road that ran parallel to the South San Gabriel River. The lots ranged in size from 10 acres to approximately 13 acres. The largest lot was sold and nine more were available. We liked two of them immediately. The one we chose had a view of the old railroad bridge crossing the river. We later learned that this was the rail route from Marble Falls to the center of Austin where they hauled huge granite chunks for building the state capital.

So that’s how we got here and here is the view of old engine 786 taken in the late 90’s before the engine was taken out of service.

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We had that view on Saturday’s and Sundays when the steam train made the run from Cedar Park, Texas to Bertram and sometimes Burnet which is northwest of our location. We saw the train become part of the movie “The Newton Boys” with scenes depicting a train robbery in progress as it crossed the river. I got a picture of the robbers running across the tops of the cars as the train crossed the bridge. That picture is around here somewhere. I need to add it to the RDX stories.

Update: I was able to locate a black and white picture of the robbers running across the roof of the train while crossing the river. This is obviously cropped from a wider angle view and I will continue the search for that. But the film crew managed to get this in one take and no one fell off the train. What that means is that I only had a few seconds to grab a photo and I was standing at the low water crossing about 100 yards away from the bridge. Not exactly a closeup. And, of course it was film at dusk – not digital with high ISO to assist.