10/02/2026
A 'real' Texas train robbery!
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19ZAE1jBwm/
Two masked men held up a train in San Antonio on July 18, 1970. It was not a freight train or a passenger line. It was the Brackenridge Eagle, the little miniature train that carried families through Brackenridge Park.
The railroad had been running since 1956, and the San Antonio Zoo says it carried a million riders in its first two years. Children rode it. Grandparents rode it. It was about the most peaceful ride in town.
That summer day, the robbers stopped the train and took money, jewelry and checkbooks from the families aboard. It went down in San Antonio history as "The Great (Little) Train Robbery."
Both robbers turned out to be soldiers from Fort Sam Houston, and both of them were caught. The zoo has called it the first train robbery in Texas in 47 years.
The little train still rolls through Brackenridge Park today, running past the river on about two miles of track, and it goes by the San Antonio Zoo Train now. Plenty of the families riding it have no idea that their gentle little train once had a real holdup, masks and all.
