Retired trainman recalls days on Pioneer Park engine

The old train on display at Mesa's Pioneer Park hasn't budged since 1958, but Wally Burgess of Mesa remembers when Southern Pacific steam locomotive No. 2355 used to fly down the tracks.

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Burgess, 82, worked on Arizona's railroads from 1947 to 1965 and says he drove locomotive No. 2355 in the early 1950s.

"That engine is a pioneer," Burgess said Thursday. "It was a part of growing and developing the West. It should be a mainstay."

Now, the condition of the old engine has degraded to a point where something must be done to preserve it. Otherwise, the Mesa City Council has said it will consider selling the train.

A citizen committee has been formed to raise $350,000 from private sources to save the train. Burgess hopes the committee finds the money.

The engine "is part of the heritage of not just Mesa, but the whole Valley area and the rest of the state," he said.

Despite a recent bout with the flu, Burgess exudes warmth and life.

His voice rumbles from deep in his chest as he tells stories about his life as a locomotive fireman.

Burgess speaks about driving trains as though he were laying the tracks that carried the U.S. into the modern age.

Burgess moved to Mesa in 1961 and worked at Valley schools for more than 20 years as an administrator, principal and superintendent. Before he retired in 1989, he taught math at Poston Junior High School in Mesa.

But it is his time working on the railroads that he loves to talk about.

"I've had some real experiences," Burgess said. "Railroads are a big part of our American history. We owe a great debt to the railroads."

Burgess served in World War II, and when he returned home in 1946 he enrolled at Arizona State University "when it was a college."

Burgess says he came from a family of railroad workers: His mother handed messages on wooden hoops from the station to the engineers as they drove through, and his father could "make a telegraph talk" when he worked for the railroad company.

His uncles also worked on the railroad, and it was his brother who got him his first job with the Santa Fe Railway in July 1947.

"I was going to Arizona State, and I needed summer work," Burgess said. "I've ran or fired a train from El Paso, over 'the Stormy' to Gila Bend, on to Yuma, to Indio, up to L.A., to Mojave, down to Bakersfield and on to Fresno."

Burgess was a fireman for Santa Fe and later for Southern Pacific. The firemen manned the boilers on the steam engines.

Burgess said many towns in the Southwest, including Mesa, developed because of the railroad.

"The steam engine is gone," Burgess said. "It's a passing parade, as they call it. But it's still a part of our history."