I have found out a lot about the vanished “Dinky” a railroad phenomenon in parts of rural America. When I lived over in Centrahoma from about 1938 to 1944 a little train came through town that provided mail and passenger services between Atoka, Coalgate, and Oklahoma City. This little diesel/electric rattled up and down the track, picking up passengers and mail by way of its little post office located in the center of the vehicle. The thing crossed the north/south tracks in Tupelo. The Dinky started its route in Dennison, Texas and made its daily journey across Oklahoma toward Kansas. This is the one that served Allen for so many years.

The US government was under a certain amount of political pressure to continue rail service to rural areas back at the turn of the century. Country roads were primitive and isolated so the Dinky, a little one car self-propelled passenger train was born. Of course, this was before the age of the automobile. While the dinky was great at providing passenger rail service in vast areas of these impassable muddy roads, it was the post office that got the job done. The dinky replaced many expensive passage trains that rattled around the country half empty.

From day one, it was felt and believed by citizens of America that it was one of the main jobs of the government to provide national and workable mail service to its citizens. Even before the advent of the railroads the government spent a lot of money seeing that those penny postcards and cheap postal stamps got those letters and packages to their destinations. That was a big reason our new nation grew so fast and became so prosperous.

Switching their subsidies over to railroad transportation system not only insured good, fast mail delivery but it also financed the railroads visions of developing and being the great and efficient tool of growth during a time of muddy roads and horse drawn stagecoaches. But time passed and “stuff” changed. The general public suddenly switched over to buying cars and pickups and demanded the same government build better roads. And do it now! They did.

These new interests looked for more road money and guess where they found it. By the early 1950s shortline rural rail services in America just vanished as the government withdrew their mail contracts as did those “handy” little dinkys that had made it possible to catch a train in Steedman or Lula to anyplace else in the world. The Allen dinky made its last run from Dennison, Texas to Coffeyville, Kansas in about 1953. All over America the loud honking sounds of the Dinky’s horn become just another lost memory.

Railroads were hard hit as the new Trucking Unions clamored for more and more government funds and better roads for their trucks as the hapless tax-paying railroads were unable to maintain their own heavy burdens of heavy taxes. Their competition being trucks driving on taxpayer provided highways and the disappearance of nice postal contracts.

Driving across the rural disasters that we call rural America these days includes looking at unending stretches of abandoned railroad lines as you drive through towns the size of Ada or Holdenville who have absolutely no public transportation. It’s gone. The question became, “Where’s the Dinky when you need it?”

Have a good week and be sure your car is in running order. Or be ready to walk. Be sure and go to church Sunday but don’t worry about the Dinky. It hasn’t got a prayer.

Wayne Bullard, DPh cwaynebullard@gmail.com