Primarily, it was football which shaped my end.  Owing to my skill in the game, I took a post-graduate at the Sheffield Scientific School, that the team might have my services for an extra two years.  That led to my knowing a little about mechanical engineering, and when I felt the “quad” for good I went into the Alton Railroad shops.  It wasn’t long before I was foreman of a section; next I became a division superintendent, and after I had stuck to that for a time I was appointed superintendent of the Kansas & Arizona Railroad, a line extending from Trinidad in Kansas to The Needles in Arizona, tapping the Missouri Western System at the first place, and the Great Southern at the other.  With both lines we had important traffic agreements, as well as the closest relations, which sometimes were a little difficult, as the two roads were anything but friendly, and we had directors of each on the K. & A. board, in which they fought like cats.  Indeed, it could only be a question of time when one would oust the other and then absorb my road.  My headquarters were at Albuquerque, in New Mexico, and it was there, in October, 1890, that I received the communication which was the beginning of all that followed.

This initial factor was a letter from the president of the Missouri Western, telling me that their first vice-president, Mr. Cullen (who was also a director of my road), was coming out to attend the annual election of the K. & A., which under our charter had to be held in Ash Fork, Arizona.  A second paragraph told me that Mr. Cullen’s family accompanied him, and that they all wished to visit the Grand Canon of the Colorado on their way.  Finally the president wrote that the party travelled in his own private car, and asked me to make myself generally useful to them.  Having become quite hardened to just such demands, at the proper date I ordered my superintendent’s car on to No. 2, and the next morning it was dropped off at Trinidad.

The moment No. 3 arrived, I climbed into the president’s special, that was the last car on the train, and introduced myself to Mr. Cullen, whom, though an official of my road, I had never met.  He seemed surprised at my presence, but greeted me very pleasantly as soon as I explained that the Missouri Western office had asked me to do what I could for him, and that I was there for that purpose.  His party were about to sit down to breakfast, and he asked me to join them:  so we passed into the dining-room at the forward end of the car, where I was introduced to “My son,” “Lord Ralles,” and “Captain Ackland.”  The son was a junior copy of his father, tall and fine-looking, but, in place of the frank and easy manner of his sire, he was so very English that most people would have sworn falsely as to his native land.  Lord Ralles was a little, well-built chap, not half so English as Albert Cullen, quick in manner and thought, being in this the opposite of his brother Captain Ackland, who was heavy enough to rock-ballast a roadbed.  Both brothers gave me the impression of being gentlemen, and both were decidedly good-looking.