¡Colores!; 1503; Albuquerque's Historic Railroad Shops; Interview with Leo Hernandez; Part 4

Okay. So do you think your ghosts in here now? You walk around and see the empty building and you know what we're not here at one time. The pictures go here. I mean, put your eye on them and tell them. My feeling about ghosts existing in this large shop is a definite yes, because like my grandmother used to say, put yourself in a position that you were back when these people were working here. And to a certain extent, you hear a little noise here, little noise there. You listen to your soul, she would say. And your soul will give you some sense of satisfaction that these people are here because they want to be here. They're not clamoring to get out or anything.

And because if they were, you'd really get an uproar from them. And I think it's a story. I don't know for sure that it happened. But out on the line, when I was working down south of Socorro, you have a desert called Journey of the Dead, out de la Hunida del Muerto. And there's a railroad running right through the middle of it. And this track supervisor said that he went out one time on a little motor car. And they reported the track having a break in it. And so he went out to check and see if it was dangerous. And if it was, they would not run a train. And so the dispatcher told him to go out and check back at that telephone right behind truth or consequences. The dam out

there. Now the railroads out about another five miles six right at the base of the desert. So while Ernest was on his way out there, why he thought he could hear horses like really, really galloping. Now there's a lot of elk out there, a lot of deer. And he said, but these sounded a hell of a lot heavier than deer. So he shut off his motor car and he's just cruising now. No engine running or anything. And sure enough, there's a horse following me, you know. He looked over behind him over this way. And sure enough, there's a guy riding a white horse. And horse has got a red mane. And it's flying away. His tail is flying away. And this guy, this guy's got in his hand. He's got a sword. And he looks like one of these,

you might call a conquistadores. And he's trying to get him to stop. And Ernest says, no way I'm going to stop for that guy. So he turns his engine back on and going a pretty good clip. He can't outrun him. And so it was raining out ahead of him, which was where the problem was at. And lightning and everything else. And he looked back, and that guy wasn't there anymore. Him or his horse. But he found the problem. And it was the track was washed out about a mile. Track was just like this, where the water washed the underneath of the track out. And he had to stop the train. But he said, he never told anybody else about me about that. And I said, well,

Ernest, I said, appreciate your story. I said, and I believe it, because there's no way I can say it didn't happen. And that's the story of La Hunia de Muerto. When you walk around here now, what do you think about it? My first thought about, say, walking around in here was how many good people came through here. And at the same time, how many families this building supported with all the work that was put out of here and stuff. And like myself, from a railroad family, there's probably a lot more people out there, like myself. A lot of good came out of buildings like this, and

people that worked here, and people that went on to other jobs like I did. And all. And about the best thing I can say for for the building is that it's still standing and look forward to maybe more good things coming out of this building. Maybe that's not over with. Oh, you once told me that leaving here was kind of like leaving home. And I was wondering if you could tell me why you felt that way. Well, I was such a young man when I went to work here. I like leaving home why you go on to better things. And I liked it because there were so many people that worked together. We worked together. We put out a lot of good locomotives out of here. And when I was laid off here, and I had to leave

home more or less, I went to Ratthome and worked there as a lead, one of the lead machinists. I found out what was going on in Ratthome that they were blaming this shop. They'd get a locomotive in and they'd have a problem with it. And those people not being shop people, they weren't qualified to fix anything. They just shut the locomotive down, drain the water, and send it back to Albuquerque and says, it's broke. Well, why not? When I went up there, why I seen pieces of equipment that hadn't been used in years, had stacks of dirt on them and all. And this locomotive was being shut down by these guys because the oil was contaminated and had a leak in the injector pipes. And so I told the guy working there. I said,

you see that blue light you got hanging on the wall there? I said, when's the last time you guys used that? I said, we don't know, it works. I said, for crying out into myself. I said, we'll get it down, dust it off. I said, we can locate the leak on this locomotive with that blue light. I said, the fuel has got a luminescence amount of additive. And wherever you'll have a leak in this top of this dark locomotive up here, the top deck, I said, that blue light will show you exactly where that leak is at. And we can either change out that pipe or repair it. And he says, I got to see this. And so there's even a plug up in the locomotive to plug this light in. And I told him, I said, look right there. I said, you got three pipes right there. I would like

the public to know that this place was at one time the livelihood of this whole area. And how much of an impact this place had. And more than likely, we'll have a further impact into the future. But in the old days, like I said earlier, the best thing about this place being here is that it brought the southwest in here to life, really. Because man, we had two to three hundred people of shift working here. And there were three shifts in the day. And you had people going home and people coming in working second and third shift in here. To keep enough locomotives on the road, to keep pulling the freight that was necessary to go from

Chicago to LA. And so that's what people should really think about is how important this place was back at that time. Because it was a VIP on the railroad. Definitely was. What's the one thing you miss about this place? I would say that the most important thing that I missed about this place was the fact that so many friends are gone now. And we're still here. There's a few of us guys have coffee like she knows about. And we think about all those guys that have passed away and some of them that just moved to other states. And others that still roam around Albuquerque, kind of doing

what they want to do. And all of that's the only reason we get together over there, talk about old times, and new ones, and the grandchildren and stuff. But more than anything else, talk about something that was really worth talking about back in those days. It's really, really shined. The VIP place to work at. Because he used to ask me, where you work at? I said, I'll work for the railroad right down here in your shop. It's about all I got to say. You worked here for 44 years. I worked for the company for 40 years. But I changed from time to time. And why did you stay here so long with the major railroad? And seem like just about everywhere you go, people ask you where you work

at. Why? It's pretty good job. I said, you're going right it is. It's a very good job. And for me, that was a selling point. Bottom line. What was the best part of the job? The best part of the job was being your own boss. I had one of the dream jobs that people think about as far as the railroad goes. I didn't have how much better my job would be if certain things worked out this way, certain things worked out this way. And it was up to

you to make things better for the people that were working for you as well as yourself. And I had my boss come out one day and he says, what are you going to do tomorrow, Leo? I said, well, I've got something new I'm going to do tomorrow. I said, I'm going to go ahead and give you a call in in Amarillo. I said, and I'm going to tell you that we're going to do safer things in a safer manner. And hopefully keep things going like they need to be going. Because if you keep the wheels rolling, things will be better. Always better. One thing you don't want to do is you don't want to slide your wheels flat because that bump will stay there forever.

Is there anything that you can think of or remember that you want to tell us that we maybe have missed? Well, there's so many things that are important. But the things that people miss the most, the people that I mean people will always see those tracks out there but they don't understand the geometry. That's something that people have missed because the shop in here would make the locomotives safer and better because we had good people working there. And people miss that a lot of times. Oh, that's just an old railroad. I don't realize how important these old guys were until they closed the shop. And that's when you miss it right there. Yes, that's it.

And anytime, go ahead. More over this plane. Just keep walking. Do that one. Okay. Any time. Okay. Get a little far from me that and go ahead.

Okay. I think I'll keep you up. And now just walk off to your right, to the left, go ahead, walk off to your right, up to

your left, and now just walk right up to your right. Let's do that again, come back a look over to your left like you're still looking around. Okay, looking around and walk off to your left. Okay, any time?

Stop right there looking around. Come on. Okay. Stay there, you're still looking around.

Still looking around, please. Okay. Okay.

Okay. And then walk off to your left, please.

Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. Okay. Okay.

And anytime. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay.