 Just as Doug Steadman was describing the Budco contribution of the land, the reason you had difficulty hearing him was that there was a Budweiser truck just going down a street here, which is one of the great ironings, I think, of the morning, or just the gods are smiling upon us even. I wanted to just fill in one other detail that might be of reference. I don't think it's been documented anywhere that at that presentation before the Texas Highway Division that we did that led to the funding, there was a phone call made to Jeff Wentworth by Jocie Strauss who had been one of the developers of the Las Casas Foundation whose son, of course, is now Speaker of the Texas House. But we think we owe a debt of gratitude to Jocie Strauss for making that phone call to Jeff Wentworth to show up because actually that Jeff Wentworth and John Saunders, the city councilman from San Antonio at the time, were there endorsing the application that we were submitting, I think gave us a leg up over some of the other presentations. I don't think that's been documented anywhere before. There's been some issues of why we really want to talk about the railroads related to the bridge. Well, there are several reasons we need to do that. The railroads have influenced this neighborhood. The neighborhood here has certainly influenced rail services you've already heard and the railroads in general have influenced San Antonio growth generally, which means that this neighborhood in San Antonio has had its own role in influencing our local growth as well. The history bridge has been a fundamental part of the dynamic all along, but to really appreciate that it's useful to appreciate a little bit about the history of railroading in San Antonio. Railroad didn't come to San Antonio until 1877. We were the last major city in North America to receive railroad services. An accident of history and geography that we can perhaps go into could have happened earlier, but for the Civil War. There were discussions nationally in the 1850s, of course, of a transcontinental route, and there was some debate about whether it should go a northern route, as it ultimately did, as you know, from Omaha to California, or whether there should be a southern route. But when the Civil War erupted that put the southern route out of the mix, had there been a southern route it likely would have influenced railroading in San Antonio, but because of the Civil War it didn't happen and it didn't come here until 17 years after the Civil War broke out. In 1877, the Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railroad inched its way finally into Bear County and into San Antonio, and the railroad line from the East ended at Hastry. Ironically enough, right at Hastry was the end of the railroad line in 1877, long before the bridge. The switching yard there with six tracks under the where the bridge is now between Bear and the roundhouse as it fanned out in that area. The original station, which BL has some photographs, it'll show to you, the original station was built opposite where Caranza's grocery is sort of on the Sherman Street side of that embankment there just down from the roundhouse. That station served as the focal point for passenger railroading in San Antonio for many years until Sunset Depot was built in 1903. The idea of that station going in ended up inspiring a lot of commercial development along Austin Street and really was responsible for a lot of what happened in this neighborhood as far as residential growth as well. Caranza's grocery actually dates from that period of the old wooden station. The new station was built further south, of course, after the decision was made to extend the railroad further west from from Hastry, and of course, as you know, as you have to go south, if you're not going to go through the Central Business District, which of course was not possible even in those days, you had to go south before you went west. As it turns out, that turn where you go from an east-west direction along the Pan Am Expressway there, roughly paralleling that to a north-south direction, that turn within a matter of a hundred yards or two is the sharpest turn in the entire Southern Pacific system in this part of the country, and that ended up leading to a derailment. Actually, folklore has it that there was more than one, but we have photographs that you might have already seen of the derailment that took place in the 1970s. The railroad saw right-of-way as it was being extended south of Hastry finally, and the city granted that right-of-way in exchange, as Doug Steadman mentioned, for a bridge to be built to serve this part of the community, so that this facility hill and the government hill and other neighbors wouldn't be isolated from downtown. Well, the trade that was made was to award Walnut Street to the Railroad for all track and purposes. As you know, streets on the near east side of town are named after trees. There's Live Oak and Chestnut. There was Walnut, Cherry, Mesquite, Hackberry, Olives, and on up. Well, Walnut Street doesn't exist anymore, but those of us who grew up in the neighborhood can remember street signs. In fact, there were no houses, or maybe one or two houses, where hobos lived or something along the railroad tracks there. But Walnut Street, and there might still be signs, I don't know, suggesting that is the railroad track. And when you wanted to offend somebody to call on the hobo or something, you would say that they lived on Walnut Street in San Antonio. That was one of the things that we remember from growing up. And in any case, this development of the railroad locally inspired San Antonio's growth enormously. And San Antonio became the largest city in Texas, influenced by several factors in the early 20th century. The Galveston, the Galveston, the Hurricane in Florida, of course, but Galveston convention, Galveston had been the largest city for a time. San Antonio was the largest city until the 1930s or so. San Antonio grew, the population here grew five times over, multiple like five times from 1900, the turn of the century into the 1930s. This population grew from 50,000 or so, just under 50,000, actually just about 40,000, to a quarter of a million by the 1930s. But by then we were, and had been, eclipsed by Houston and else. But the railroads are what made it possible that enormous growth, that enormous growth would not have been possible without the railroads and without H.S.T. Bridge playing the role that it did. There was a reference made, the question about the role of the explosion at the S.P. Shanks, which took place in 1912, my new 1912. That was the same year at the H.S.T. Bridge opened. So the bridge witnessed, the preparations of the bridge, witnessed some major events in local history. This was the largest industrial accident up until that time in Texas, and it's only been eclipsed by the great Texas City explosion, the ammonium nitrate corn products explosion in 1947. But it remains the largest explosion of a railroad boiler altogether in the country. The reason it happened was that, as you know, the process of creating the steam involves building up a lot of, or powering the engine, what really amounts to the external combustion engine, which is sort of the steam engine as opposed to the internal, involves building up a lot of pressure. That pressure has to go somewhere, usually a relief valve will end up releasing that pressure. In this case, the two relief valves were shut off so that the pressure became so enormous that the steam engine became a bomb for all practical purposes. It blew up in early March of 1912, blasting shrapnel for 10 blocks or more, 10 block radius around the roundhouse, which meant that the shrapnel and debris would have hit us. If we happen to be playing in Loughborough Park, and as John Tite had described, it was a force powerful enough to knock his father as a child to the ground more than 10 blocks away. But explosion was heard for 20 miles around, and you could practically hear the explosion, and it's again, it killed 26 people, injured dozens more, more than 40 people were injured, and it leveled adjacent houses and buildings, and even injured people who were affected by debris falling through their roofs and collapsing their houses around them. That's how serious it was. Circumstances that led to it are really compelling to explore, and I think bear more investigation. There was a strike going on at the time, and there were strike breakers who were manning the engine there, necessarily not what they were doing. And that is the official line, and I'm not going to weigh in one way or another on that because the record is highly ambiguous. One of the things that isn't though, that is also rather curious, is that there were a significant number of minority employees there who perhaps had been hired as strike breakers. When you look at the newspaper accounts at the time, they identify, it's interesting, they identify the positions of those who have been injured, but if they happen to be black or Mexican-American, they're just described as Negro or Mexican in the newspaper. And the description of those who were killed, not a majority of them were minority employees, there's a significant larger number than you would have expected at such an industrial site at that time in history, and of course the late-run rest might have had something to do with that. But it's a fascinating part of our overall history, and BL has some photos that can enlighten you a little bit more about that. Last thing I want to talk about is the description of the newspaper account of the injured and dead gave addresses of where if people lived, they were all from this neighborhood. Most of them were Mesquite Street, Pine, Olive, and so on. They were neighbors here, and people lived near work, of course, in those days, made a lot of sense, but that is an area of some considerable controversy. The realm that you have photographs of is the other big, one of the other big events in the neighborhood, affecting the railroad generally. There's practically a 90-degree turn in less than a couple hundred yards there. This derailment placed the accounts that I've read, the descriptions I've heard suggest that it was an Amtrak. The early days of Amtrak were in the early 70s since that national passenger railroad corporation was formed, I think in 71. Even though that engine has Union Pacific markings on it, and this is the image of it that some of you have seen, that train was obviously speeding, and there was a speed-related issue, but there was also a weather-related issue. There was the winder that was still on the ground, as you might have noticed in those photographs. Speed limit was 15 miles an hour, which was really slow for a train. They moved the switching yard, so I had time to fashion that, but that was the speed limit then. I don't think it's much higher than that now. That train that ended up in Austin Street obviously was out of control, so they might have applied the brakes too late and ended up sliding literally off the rails. If you look at Austin Street right near Duval, where that takes place, you'll see an embankment with the tracks right at the very edge of it. When you're on the train, part of the train is practically over Austin Street there, so it's really sort of amazing. It's comparable to riding Amtrak along a river valley or something, that you really can't see what's supporting you, and all you see is Austin Street as you're making that turn. In fact, call that steep embankment the Levy, and it has been known as that in local railroad lore for a long time. Forcibly that 73 derailment didn't result in any loss of life, just a lot of embarrassment and a few people needing new jobs as a result. And according to folklore, there have been other such near misses or derailments that were not highly publicized in that location as well. Back of Hastry Bridge, just as we conclude this, I want to mention that the bridge itself was owned by the railroads until 2007, from the time they were constructed before they were moved here, as Doug Stetman suggested, in 1881 until 2007, they were in the hands of the railroad, which reluctantly gave them up. Anybody who's dealt with a railroad knows that their railroads are very slow to move and are very difficult to negotiate with or to get an agreement from, and the railroad didn't necessarily want to surrender that bridge to the public. They did, and it's our legacy. They have equipped that bridge to the community here, and it's up to the citizens of San Antonio who have been entrusted with the future, and all of our leaders to protect that request and that legacy, and we hope to be up to the task. One final point to mention related to railroad history in San Antonio that I think is also important, I'm a big Amtrak advocate as you know, is the numbering of the trains that come through San Antonio. Amtrak numbers its trains according to their sequence and historical significance within the system. Well, the Sunset Limited trains that come through San Antonio are Amtrak trains number one and two. So that we have a significant railroad legacy to protect here in San Antonio. Michael Meyer who is the former chairman of the San Antonio Rail Heritage Museum which operates and maintains the Indian 794 down at Sunset Station is a local rail historian who is going to offer some other insights and can maybe answer questions that you might have about local railroad history. I must also say, and I'm embarrassed to say this with BL standing here, that the photographs that I circulated of the derailment came from the Texas Transportation Museum website. BL maintains a very fine website as well for his museum. The competing museum contributed the photographs that you've seen. Sorry about that. Hey, it happens. It happens. I'm talking about Amtrak. I want to just make one point, a quick point before Mehdi is introduced by Marisol. And that's that San Antonio is the only city in Texas that has two long distance trains operating through it. The Dallas and Houston each have one. Fort Worth has that short train that goes up to Oklahoma City, the Harlem Flyer. San Antonio has the east-west train number one, number two. The Sunset Limited, of course, which is, as we noted, one of the more historic trains in the system. And also train number 21 and 22, which is the Texas Eagle, which leaves every morning from Sunset Station a few blocks away there to Chicago. And you get to Austin on it. If you leave 7 in the morning, you get to Austin at 9. It's a great commuter coming back from Austin. And back here at 9 o'clock, it leaves Austin at 6.30 in the evening. It gets back here at 9 p.m. So there is already commuter rail between San Antonio and Austin. There's only one train a day each way. But that's all you need if you plan very carefully. So consider that. Thank you. Yes, sir. No, that doesn't exist anymore. The tracks, there was a train, just a trolley car that went into, that's operated by the Museum Association, I think at one point, or the Transportation Museum before, actually, moved out to Wettmoore. On those tracks along Jones Avenue, those tracks, in fact, went to the station. The original location of the station that we've been talking about just in the neighborhood here. So the trolley cars that were in place in San Antonio were focused on moving people from the train station around the city, or through the rest of the city. So you can still see remnants of those trolley car tracks. But the dinner train, which was using some of those tracks for time, doesn't exist anymore.