Western Railroad Discussion > Classic Santa Fe 1950s

Here is a picture of classic Santa Fe railroading in the 1950s.

Taken at Keenbrook Ca. Photographer unknown.

This is the Santa Fe of my youth. I still miss it.

Yardclerk

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The Passenger Train as the Santa Fe Railroad beheld it.

Photographer unknown. Location is supposed to be Cajon Ca.

Yardclerk

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Santa Fe S4 1500 at San Diego Ca.

I'm not sure if this picture was taken in the 1950s, but it represents Santa Fe's Classic Switch engine paint scheme.

It must have been an expensive and labor intensive task to mask and paint, but it looks so good.

Yardclerk

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Those pics pretty much sum it up for me too. I grew up in a Santa Fe family- father, mother, and uncles all worked for the ATSF (GS&SF to be more precise). I started on the ATSF in 1969, then moved over to the MP in 1972. Everything in our house had the ATSF logo on it it seemed. We ate off of ATSF plates using ATSF silverware. Stolen? No- safety awards. Pictures were given quite a bit as safety awards too. I just wish I had saved some of the calendars.

Post'em if you got'em!

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Great Photos. The Santa Fe 200 class F units were alway favorite locomotives of mine. In the second photo, the train is the Chief and it is carrying green flags for a following section. It was common for number 20 to run in sections however they were not always sections of the Chief. A practice of the Santa Fe on the LA Division was to run one of the sections of the El Capitan-Super Chief as a section of number 20. The purpose was to allow either section to leave LAUPT when it was ready at or after departure time. This prevented the problem that if the train running as first 18 was delay then second 18 would have to wait or exchange orders causing delays and possible confusion.

To yardclerk -

All I can say is......AWESOME! Thank you for the excellent photos of our youth......God Bless the SANTA FE!

Bob

ATSF100WEST

Thanks for the photos! Hope you have more to post. Brings back memories, I lived in Albuquerque in the early 60's where I first witnessed the SF closeup. Moved to Texas in late 1962, lived right by the tracks on the Lampasas Sub, got to see the F's run out their final days, also remember seeing Alco PA's on the daily Houston-Clovis passenger train. Troop trains out of Ft.Hood with passenger F's and passenger cars from about every rr in the U.S.(looked a lot like early Amtrak consists). The best thing was there was a set of semaphores right across the highway from our house so we also knew when something was comin'. Thanks again and long live the Santa Fe! Tom L, Austin,TX.

Great stuff, yardclerk, and thanks for the kind comments about my comments on your earlier thread. Were you perchance once a Santa Fe yard clerk? I have a couple of friends who were yeard clerks and operators.

If you have any more questions about the Santa Fe in San Diego in the '50's, '60's and early 70's, just let me know!

Incidentally, my synopsis of why the GP-9's were 700's is this: When they bought the GP-7s, they numbered them in the sequence fpor swtich engines. Until then, the 2100's were (newer) Alcos (RSD-5s), the 2200's were Baldwins, the 2300s were Alcos and the 2400's were EMDs. I don't recallw hat a 2500 was, and I don;t have my copy of Worley handy. By the time they bought the GP-9s, they realized these were really road engines, and the 700 class was the next availbale slot in the sequence. The 100s were FTs, the 200s were freight F units, the 300s were passenger F units, and the 400s, 500s and 600s were oddballs. After the 700s , they just kept going with the 800s (alligators), 900s (SD-24s), 1000s?, 1100s (GP-20s,) 1200s (GP30s), 1300-1460 (GP-35s), (whoops,1500s are already taken),1600s (U25Bs), 1700s (SD-40s), and 1800s (SD45s) in order of purchase. The 1967 renumbering changed most of that, so that similar engines were grouped by type.

DFW

DFW,

I worked for the Santa Fe in Oklahoma City from 1980-84 as a yardclerk. Also worked as an operator at Purcell Ok a few times.

I got laid off in 1984. Santa Fe bought my seniority later that year in order to clean up the employee roster before merging with the SP. Glad I took it since the merger flopped.

Yardclerk