Nostalgia & History > Santa Fe San Bernardino Shop Tour 1981

There have been a couple of threads on this subject posted here over the last few months and since they seemed to be popular with the TO crowd, I dug around and gathered up all my shots from this tour and scanned them for your enjoyment. There are 33 images in this thread so heaven help anyone who is looking at this with dial-up. It'll probably take a month of Sundays to load.

This tour was arranged as part of the Santa Fe Modelers Organization (SFMO) meet which was held in the San Bernardino depot on March 14, 1981. At a ripe old age of 16, I was a die-hard Santa Fe fan then so the tour was quite a treat. Of course, most everything shown in these images is gone now.

I was just starting to get into photography at the time so forgive me if some of the shots are kinda' crappy. They are posted here in the approximate order they were taken. Anyone here familiar with the specific locations or subjects, please chime in and give some details.

Photo 01 - Caboose shop

Photos 02 & 03 - Santa Fe Ce-3 waycar 999615 up on jack-stands getting some repairs and updates. What's odd is that it looks like the car was freshly repainted, complete with a yellow cupola designating it as a local-service caboose, then was put back in the shop before it was released and updated with sealed windows, new brake equipment, electrical, trucks, etc. as though they decided to make it a road caboose at the last minute. Anyone know the story?

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Photo 04 - GA-16 covered hopper getting some new safety appliances.

Photo 05 - Mechanical reefer repair tracks.

Photo 06 - GA-178 "Conditionaire" refrigerated covered hopper in for repairs.

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Photo 07 - Aside from the transfer table pit and a few freight cars, I'm not sure what the buildings are or the exact location. Anyone?

Photo 08 - Carpentry shop.

Photo 09 - Caboose getting painted. Primer, then yellow, then white, and the last main color will be red. Notice the mechanical reefer power assemblies (engine/compressor) in the foreground.

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Photo 10 - Transfer table.

Photo 11 - Looking across the transfer table. I'm not sure what the various buildings are except the blue building is a paint bay. Scrap gondola on the left. Don't know what the odd looking converted flatcar in the center is but it appears to be numbered ATSF 199966.

Photo 12 - Another view of the transfer table.

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Photo 13 - Covered hopper inside the paint bay. Notice the stencils hanging on the left wall.

Photo 14 - The truck shop where locomotive trucks were stripped down and reconditioned.

Photo 15 - I'm pretty sure this was a GP20u although I don't know the number. There were several of them around there and this one had the long hood pulled off which was sitting on the shop floor behind the unit.

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Photo 16 - Traction motor shop.

Photo 17 - GP20u No. 3049 getting some finishing touches. It was released from the shop later that month.

Photo 18 - F45 No. 5901 getting some TLC.

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Photo 19 - Another view of F45 No. 5901 getting some TLC.

Photo 20 - SD40 No. 5016 getting stripped down for an overhaul in preparation for becoming a SD40u.

Photo 21 - GP30 No. 3263 also getting stripped down.

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Photo 22 - SD26 No. 4634 on shop trucks and stripped down. I don't know if it was overhauled or if it ever ran again. GP30 No. 3242 is in the background, still in yellow pinstripe paint.

Photo 23 - You can smell the fresh paint on GP35 No. 3456.

Photo 24 - Have fun captioning this one!

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Photo 25 - Brand new prime mover.

Photo 26 - SD45 No. 5556 getting stripped down.

Photo 27 - A couple of SD40-2s, No. 5054 and an unknown unit, getting some major TLC.

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Photo 28 - Misc. units waiting to go into the shop, including F45 No. 5930, SD26 No. 4634, SD40-2 No. 5044, and SD40 No. 5013.

Photo 29 - SD40-2 No. 5044 getting some work done.

Photo 30 - From the other side of the transfer table.

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Photo 31 - SD45-2 No. 5647 and SD40 No. 5013 waiting for new prime movers.

Photos 32 & 33 - Fresh F45 No. 5933 getting a few finishing touches before being released.

That's all. Hope you enjoyed them.

Mike

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Very cool, Thx for sharing.

Nice series of shots. Anyone match them from 1941?

Absolutely AWESOME, Mike. Love the tour. Thanks for sharing! Next to the WP, I'd have to saw the Santa Fe is one of my favorite Class 1s. Can imagine how exiting that tour must have been. Now you've got me recalling how many shots I have taken in Arizona and the Mojave Desert that I need to scan....

The 4634 was one of the SD26s traded in to EMD on GP50s in 1985.

Z

So glad you took the time to do that. Wish I had done the same thing in Cleburne, Tx. But, heck it would "always be there". Just plain dumb not to do it especially back then when all you had to do was go sign a release. Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzee!

OUTSTANDING!!!
I still have a hard time accepting that IT'S ALL GONE!!!
And with it, hundreds of good paying Union jobs.
God bless the moguls of American business, without them we might have kept some jobs in the USA instead of shipping them overseas.
I have nothing against India but every time I call customer service from any business I am always talking to Bombay, where are our children going to find work???
God Bless America, we're gonna need it.
90mac

Great pictures. I was there on a tour in 1973, but they did not allow us to take pictures.

Shannon

I think I was on that 1973 tour. Our guide was a supervisor named Doug Sizemore as I recall. And I remember one of our group pointing out a steam relic in the yard that he said was going to be restored and running someday. We now know her as ATSF 3751.

GREAT shots, Mike. The Santa Fe did these tours quite well.

I was on that '73 adventure too. IIRC, the weather sucked, there was a freshly rebuilt F9B in the "Yellowbonnet" scheme, with the spark arrestors bagged, awaiting pickup, and the "Santa Caboose" had just been released for the holidays.

In February of '74, I came oh so close to getting into the machinists' apprenticeship program there. The recession got me. They furloughed the entire graveyard shift, and half of the swing shift, and temporarily suspended the hiring of apprentices, all in one fell swoop. Worked out OK, because I would have had to relocate to Topeka, and eventually lose employment there.

Bob

ATSF100WEST......Out

Shannon Wrote:
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> Great pictures. I was there on a tour in 1973, but
> they did not allow us to take pictures.
>
> Shannon

trainjunkie Wrote:

> Photos 02 & 03 - Santa Fe Ce-3 waycar 999615 up on
> jack-stands getting some repairs and updates.
> What's odd is that it looks like the car was
> freshly repainted, complete with a yellow cupola
> designating it as a local-service caboose, then
> was put back in the shop before it was released
> and updated with sealed windows, new brake
> equipment, electrical, trucks, etc. as though they
> decided to make it a road caboose at the last
> minute. Anyone know the story?

Wow! Looks like you caught 999615 as it was being rebuilt into the one and only class Ce-12 caboose, 999652. As you surmised, it was being turned into a road caboose, using the cushion underframe from a wrecked mechanical refrigerator car. Earlier upgrade programs in the 1960's had turned hundreds of old steel cabooses into road pool cabooses in classes Ce-1 and 2, and subsequent programs in 1978 turned out a few dozen Ce-9 and 10 class cars, but this one Ce-12 was the last gasp of caboose upgrades. The rest of the "unimproved" class Ce and Ce-5 cars were retired in 1982, and the minimally upgraded Ce-3 and 7 class local service cars began dropping too. Then caboose-off agreements went into effect, and it was open season. The 999652 now resides in Mulvane, KS, on display next to the brick Santa Fe depot:

http://atsf.railfan.net/waycars/ce12.html

> Photo 04 - GA-16 covered hopper getting some new safety appliances.

That's actually a Ga-161 - a rib is hiding the final 1.

> Photo 07 - Aside from the transfer table pit and a few freight cars, I'm not sure
> what the buildings are or the exact location. Anyone?

You're looking southwest. You can see the very top of the San Bernardino depot above the "Shock Control" lettering on the boxcar in the middle of the photo.

The endpapers of The Santa Fe Diesel V.1 have a diagram of the Ssn Bernardino shop complex. The gray building in the center of the frame (to the right of the depot) was the company storehouse.

> Photo 11 - Looking across the transfer table. I'm not sure what the various
> buildings are except the blue building is a paint bay.

The building on the left is identified as a metal press shop, and on the right is the traction motor building.

> Scrap gondola on the left. Don't know what the odd looking converted flatcar
> in the center is but it appears to be numbered ATSF 199966.

That's a car for transporting traction motors. They occupied numbers in the range 199960-199999 according to the Santa Fe Modelers Organization book Work Equipment Cars. The gon on the right with the cover on it is also in traction motor service.

> Photo 22 - SD26 No. 4634 on shop trucks and stripped down. I don't know if it was
> overhauled or if it ever ran again.

The 4634 had been rebuilt from SD24 4534 in May 1977. Looks like it was in for an overhaul, and they were using the downtime to convert the old one-piece windshield into a two-piece affair that took standard-sized glass. I've got a picture of 4634 reassembled and in service at Albuquerque in January 1982, so it did live to fight another day. As the other fella said, it lasted on the roster until 1985, when it was traded in to EMD on GP50's and scrapped.

> Photo 24 - Have fun captioning this one!

My caption would be "What the heck is that Nathan M3 doing in there?" (the rust colored horn at the lower right). Santa Fe did use some five-chime M5's on passenger units and a few single note MS1's on FM switchers back in the days of first generation diesels, but by 1981 those locomotives and horns were extinct on the railroad. I can't recall ever seeing a Santa Fe unit in any era with an M3. Wonder if it came in on a junker locomotive that Santa Fe bought from another railroad for parts, and the powers-that-be hadn't gotten around to disposing of the nonstandard component yet. Thanks for the tour!