Steam & Excursion > Monday Museum Steam: Santa Fe 1073

This locomotive is actually at a historical marker rather than a museum. The marker and locomotive are in Lawrence, KS, in Watson Park.

The marker reads:

Donated in 1955
by A.T.&S.F. Railroad
Is a 2-6-2 Prairie type
locomotive from 1908
[Retired] 1952. It logged
871,114 miles.

Photo taken in 2004, when daughter was in grad school at KU.

B&O Bill



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/24 06:18 by bandob.

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I've seen a photo of that engine being shoved across the street with a big crowd of people watching, when it was delivered to the park. (It was in FB "Lawrence History Geeks I think) In fact, I vaguely remember going over to Lawrence with my day to watch also. Anyway, the bell appears to be on the engine in that photo, when they were shoving it into the park, buy you'll notice it's gone now. Hopefully it's in the city museum, or in an office somewhere around town. but more than likely, it's gone for good. Around Christmas, it's "the blue light special" covered with several strings of blue lights. And, in "Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Trail", it shows up pulling the Alma local past the Pauline depot.

Baker Valve Gear?  A bit of a rarity on the Santa Fe - especially on an older locomotive.

The Santa Fe was quite a railroad. It had some of the finest mainline passengers trains in the world and then you had tea kettles with a relatively rare wheel arrangement like this working out their last years on the Santa Fe branchlines. Throw in gas electrics, wonderful steam locos like the Santa Fe 4-8-4s, plus F units and you had a classy railroad with a lot of variety and history. And then display the famous war bonnet paint scheme and talk about a railroad that ran from Chicago to the West Coast from the big city, through the prairies and up and down mountains and you had a fantastic railroad that any rail would have been proud to work for. And hurrah for the Santa Fe that wouldn't give Amtrak it's "Super Chief" name in full.  Santa Fe, you were right, there is no way that Amtrak could live up to your class act. And you ran intermodal at high speed well into the modern era.

Victor Baird

Back in the early 1990s. my wife was in grad school at KU. When I was in town on off days. I'd take our young daughter to the park to play on that engine.

Interstingly her second great grandfather ran such locomotives on the Santa Fe.

Earlk Wrote:
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> Baker Valve Gear?  A bit of a rarity on the Santa
> Fe - especially on an older locomotive.

The Baker gear would have occurred during the conversion from balanced compound to single-expansion.

bandob Wrote:

> The marker reads:
>
> Donated in 1955 by A.T.&S.F. Railroad
> Is a 2-6-2 Prairie type locomotive from 1908
> Retired 1952. It logged 871,114 miles.

Santa Fe Steam Survivors shows 1073 taken out of service for the last time at Argentine (Kansas City, KS) on September 6, 1952.  The locomotive assignment lists show it held for disposition as of April 1953 but not actually retired from the rolls until December 1953.  It then hung around for another year and a half before being donated to Lawrence, KS on June 7, 1955.  It didn't take long for graffiti vandals to go to work on it.  An item in the August 23, 1955 edition of the Ottawa (Kansas) Herald reports:

"The ancient steam locomotive, "Old 1073," is suffering from kids pranks at Lawrence.  The old locomotive, in Central Park, had a pair of high school class symbols painted on either side of the tender as the latest prank.  Previously, someone stuffed kindling wood down the smokestack and started a fire in the firebox."

LocoPilot750 Wrote:

> And, in "Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Trail", it shows up pulling the Alma local past the Pauline depot.

That photo also appears in this old thread: https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,5400591
The Kansas State Historical Society also has a print: https://www.kansasmemory.org/item/451482/page/1

Earlk Wrote:

> Baker Valve Gear?  A bit of a rarity on the Santa Fe - especially on an older locomotive.

Santa Fe actually fitted a fair number of locomotives with Baker gear during the 1910's, including smaller engines built as compounds that were being simpled such as the 1050-class Prairies.  Many got Walschaerts gear instead, but of the 10 surviving members of the 1050-class, five have Baker gear:

1067: https://www.rgusrail.com/album/ksatsf1067/atsf_1067_04.jpg
1073: https://www.hmdb.org/PhotoFullSize.asp?PhotoID=283117
1108: https://www.rgusrail.com/album/okatsf1108/atsf_1108_24.jpg
1129: https://www.rgusrail.com/album/nmatsf1129/atsf_1129_37.jpg
1139: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevesloan/48674948103/

Elesco Wrote:

> The Baker gear would have occurred during the conversion from balanced compound to single-expansion.

The 1050-class were built as Vauclain compounds.