Western Railroad Discussion > JOHN R. HAYDEN History

The JOHN R. HAYDEN was part of the Santa Fe Railroad tugboat fleet that barged rail cars across the San Francisco Bay until service was suspended in 1984. She was built in 1945 as the U.S. Army tug LT-830 and is now the TITAN owned by Souse Bros. and operating out of Coos Bay OR. In between she was owned by Marine Power and named MARINE CRUSADER and HARRIS BAY. The original tug was powered by a 3 cylinder Skinner Unaflow steam engine driving a single screw. She seems to have been repowered three times. The Santa Fe put in a 1800 diesel. Then Marine Power converted her to twin controllable pitch props with four 16149 General Motor engines. Then Sause Bros. put in two 12 cylinder turbo EMD engines.

Attached are pictures of the HAYDEN (from Steve Lang), MARINE CRUSADER (from Steve Lang), and TITAN (from Sause Bros.). Registry Number is 253495, IMO number is 8424123. Thanks to William Lafferty of Wright State, Steve Lang, and Julie Woodman & Glen Saubert of Sause Bros. for their help.

-Roger

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So thats what happened to the Hayden.....she's not recognizable anymore, but it is truly amazing she is still in service. The first photo displayed is at Todd Shipyards in Alameda where she was dieselized.

RogerTaft Wrote:

> The JOHN R. HAYDEN was part of the Santa Fe
> Railroad tugboat fleet that barged rail cars
> across the San Francisco Bay until service was
> suspended in 1984.

If I remember rightly, Valley Division Vignettes indicates that the Hayden was sold about a decade before the end of Santa Fe freight ferry service. The Hastings was definitely the only tug left when operations ceased in 1984.

Thanks for digging up the Hayden's subsequent history! Good to know at least one Santa Fe tug is still on the surface.

Riffian Wrote:
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> So thats what happened to the Hayden.....she's not
> recognizable anymore,

If you flash between the pictures you can see that most of the superstructure is still the same. The only real change is the exhaust stacks. It doesn't look like it would be all that tough to restore it to the way it looked operating for the Santa Fe (but as we all know the dreaded words "All you have to do is......" comes easy from someone sitting looking at pictures on a computer).