San Diegan races through the oil producing area of Santa Fe Springs east of LA. Pulling the train in this 1950s scene are the railroad's only Fairbanks-Morse locomotives. Donald Duke photo.
Along with all the oil platforms, look at all the cross arms on those telegraph poles! I count 9. Is that right? Wow, Can you imagine the labor it took to keep all those lines straight, or well separated over a few hundred miles.
This Union Station in Rosenberg, Texas was built in 1917 to replace an earlier structure that served both the Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific. This photo shows the depot building between the SP line toward the bottom of the image and the ATSF line further away. This image was from the early 1960s. The Railway Express office is on the far left. This photo shows the Santa Fe side of the abandoned depot that is about to be demolished in about 1980. Here is an earlier view from the top of some box cars parked at the cotton warehouse across the Santa Fe tracks showing the Railway Express office and the depot hiding behind some palm trees. The Gulf Colorado & Santa Fe was part of the AT&SF while the Galveston Harrisburg & San Antonio was part of the SP system.
There's an interchange near the station, right? Isn't that where the Santa Fe's trains were split into Houston and Galveston sections? Meanwhile, in New Mexico, 3781 leans into a curve with mail train #12...
Yes, the diamond and Tower 17 were about a quarter mile west where the Santa Fe crossed over the SP Sunset Route and then headed up toward Temple and beyond. Sometime after WWI all Santa Fe passenger trains switched over via track rights to the Sunset Route here and stopped at the SP side of the station before heading directly into Houston. The Galveston sections then left for that city out of Houston. A modern drone shot showing the track layout. The Sunset Route heads straight while the Santa Fe crosses over from the left toward the upper right in the photo. The interchange track is to the right of the diamond.
Did you, perhaps, mean the railroad's only Fairbanks-Morse passenger locomotives? Here is a pair of ATSF Fairbanks-Morse freight locomotives.
Yup, I knew that. Just forgot to include one word. That happens sometimes when you turn into a grumpy old geezer.
All I know for sure is that crews were under strict instructions not to let low bridges knock them off.
With its mainline tiptoeing within Iowa's southeast border, the Santa Fe had only 17 miles of line in the state. On the west bank of the Mississippi River is Fort Madsion, the largest city served on the segment.
Hard to say where that was. The Colorado Midland was a property the Santa Fe intended to shove through to Grand Junction in competition with the Rio Grande. But the terrain refused to yield a direct route. So when the Santa Fe Railroad went broke in 1893, it was spun off as the Midland Terminal, and wandered south in search of local traffic.
A steamer (probably an early 2-10-2) helps the five car El Cap into Raton Tunnel, June 1938. Not the most photographic tunnel entrance in railroading...
Love those old Santa Fe cantilever signal bridges. Some not so old photos that I took in July of 2014.
Raton, New Mexico in 1949. The Imperial Point was a Pennsylvania 4-4-2 sleeper painted in two tone gray for the New York-Los Angeles through sleeping car service.
Wow, a Pennsylvania car, painted in NYC colors, on the Santa Fe a long way from home! I see one of the fake "painted fluted" cars on the right too.
