Western Railroad Discussion > Albuquerque busy Train Day

Lots of action (for Albuquerque) early on Saturday as National Train Day was being set up.

1. The Amtrak display locomotive ventured into an industrial neighborhood to retrieve the restored tender to ATSF 2926. The 4-8-4 sat in an Albuquerque park for decades and is being restored to operating condition by the New Mexico Steam Locomotive and Railroad Historical Society.

2. While the tender waited in the clear, the northbound five-car Rail Runner Express train from Belen to Santa Fe came in and picked up about 100 passengers. That's the Amtrak historical-display train on the right.

3. With the Rail Runner gone and the tender shoved against the Amtrak display train, the BNSF Lamy Local sallied forth. No telling if it made it all the way to Lamy, which I gather is a rare occurrence these days. Those are the ATSF shops in the background, home to the Wheels Museum and an about-to-start city project to restore the larger buildings for public use.

This all happened between about 8:40 a.m. and 9:20 a.m. with official Train Day activities, which drew a large crowd, not starting until 1 p.m.

Bill

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Albuquerque must have been quite a show in the 50's--Route 66, steam trains, plenty of passenger and freight trains over Raton, and the shops. Must have been quite a place...

A P42 and a tender....who'da thought...
Nice shots from what looks like a nice event

atk for hep :o) peeps are crying

Was the whistle atop the tender operable with air for the event? Nice shot angle with the camera at the time. For a "non-foamer" one might have thought there was a person atop the power pole with a rope to operate the whistle. Tender is looking good here after the rebuild that's taken place on it. Is there a projected operable date for the locomotive yet? How may boiler tube donations needed yet to fulfill that portion of the rebuild?

You can find out how many flue tubes are still left by looking at their home page, and if you go through the clubs "Minutes" link and click on April, it talks about the whistle on the tender. It's also mentioned on one of the "work Status" pages too somewhere. Interesting site for sure, and if you can find the list of the "newsletters" in there, some good reading there too.
http://www.nmslrhs.org/

I didn't realize the new diesels that Amtrak purchased required a tender! :)

I'm glad you took the shot.

Dan Quiat

I traveled back to Alb to seen this train day and still missed it. By the photo, the Lamy local only had cars for General Mills. They could of still went out to pull the Rosario tanks, the city's Chorine tanks and/or the Bernallio rock hoppers.

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