ATSF Location - REALLY unknown!

I was scanning in an old album today after the excitement died down...

I found three shots from a trip I made out west with my parent in June 1972. I was riding on three trains - the Amtrak "Chief" #19 to LA via ATSF, the Coast Daylight SP route up to San Francisco (SP) and then back on the "San Francisco Zephyr from San Francisco to Chicago.

I can't place these photos. I suspect that die-hard ATSF fans might be able to pick the locations with the clues, I consider myself one but I still haven't found them. Consider this a contest!

What's amazing is that I took these in '72 with a Kodak Instamatic and scanned them today. The color has held up amazingly well for old 3x3 prints. I was 15, these are my very oldest "railfan" prints. Shot through train windows, tinted, and getting dirtier the further west we got.

#1 - where is this? I know it is on the south side of the main line, east end of the building, as I was riding in the dome. I suspect New Mexico - Arizona, maybe Albuquerque, Gallup, Belen??




#2 - another 'where is it???' This is on the north side of the tracks, ATSF, a saddle tank engine on display beside the station.



#3 This is somewhere around Los Angeles, and it might even be on SP. Not sure. I just remember that I knew what "sky boxes" were and took a quick shot. Any idea where this was?



So this isn't a complete waste of time, here's one I do know and you'll enjoy - a shot of the Argentine Engine terminal (north side of train out of KC) with a whole lot of FM switchers at the time. June '72:

 

I'l bite and take a shot at this. I'm not a die hard Santa Fe guru but I think I can help us focus in on or eliminate a specific location.

The first one reminds me of a building at Williams, AZ. Or... Is that Phoenix, AZ., did you take a side trip? LOL

The second one reminds of a similar locomotive in Flagstaff, AZ. As do the store fronts and background.

 

No, no side trips. Definitely not Phoenix, or Flagstaff, or Williams. I got off and wandered around the platform at Flag, but I distinctly remember being out of film. Remember Williams was bypassed with the Crookton cutoff.

I'm a lot more suspect of everthing between Raton and about Gallup.

 

Although I was but a wee 7-month old baby when this pic was taken just a few miles away from me, this is in Burbank, CA between Burbank Airport (now Bob Hope Airport) and Burbank Junction on the SP Coast Line.

This is the original Lockheed "Skunk Works" factory that's been building bombers and fighter planes since WWII. The factory moved to Palmdale, CA in the 90s and today the site is the location of a shopping center.

Here's the location on Google Maps:
http://maps.google.com/maps?oe=utf-...12,-118.330393&spn=0.026127,0.055747&t=h&z=15

 

Yeah, and that's exactly why I'm getting them scanned and into a safe deposit box!

 

I have an even LESS pleasant memory of Flagstaff from summer of 1975. I was driving, following the Santa Fe rather than the direct highway route, all the way from central Texas to Clovis to Los Angeles. I got a lot of good slides until I got to Flagstaff where the camera broke.

Only other slides I got for the rest of the trip was at Universal Studios, where they rented me a camera for use only on the premises.

 

Randy, I could be wrong, but that tank engine looks like one around the Gallup area. I took a shot of one from the interstate, but deleted the photo.
I suspect the top photo is Albuquerque, but someone local can help there. That building may be gone.

 

OK..... I think Campp may have a hit on the second one when we've at least narrowed it to state. Did a search and came up with this, I'm pretty darn sure this is the 0-4-0 locomotive, which means that HAD to have been Gallup:

Steam Locomotive Information

I'm going to dig around some more in my books and check some Albuquerque views to see if I can ID that building. I know the whole complex around the station burned at some point, but I didn't think that was part of it. But that would explain why I've never been able to ID it since.

This could be worse guys, I've got a bunch of shots I just marked as "Mojave desert"!

I'll put up a couple more I know just so that people get rewarded for even looking...thanks for what you've got so far! Now there two are a couple of my all-time favorites, one of the reasons I model ATSF in '72:

I know I took this one on 'day one' when we left Union Station, marked as "Illinois". This was the one and only year that Amtrak ran 19/20 as a summer-only second section and called it the "Chief". It was a super-abbreviated Super Chief consist; you can see the F7A/F7B/F7A/F7B that hit 97mph in Kansas, a smooth-side baggage; two hi-levels in FRONT of the dome, a Budd dome (i noted it as Burlington), then I noted the following: ex-UP diner, Amtrak-striped 10/6 heritage unknown, UP pullman all-bedroom. At KC we put on two coaches from the National and another pullman on the rear.



I tied down that front corner inside dome seat and about lived there. You had to pry me out. But with the hi-levels in front of the SHORT end of the dome this was one of the better views.

This shot is at LAUPT, blurry, but proves the point and this is why "302" has always been on my layout since. This was on an adjacent track:



As I reminder, I was 15, and this was my first great adventure where I had a clue what I was looking at and had a camera in my hand. I was pretty timid on this leg. By the next leg (up to San Francisco) I started chatting up the Conductor and got a set of train orders and 'almost' a cab ride. By the third leg, the photos are crystal clear, because I'd talked the conductor into letting me ride the dutch doors up Donner Pass...