Nostalgia & History > Some Santa Fe from the Midwest - 1981

A few from the Santa Fe files.

1) Santa Fe #3531 leads Train #463 Z-1 eastbound by the
depot at Wellsville, KS just after dawn.
May 27, 1981.

2) I am a sucker for crew change shots. Here is one such
shot at Emporia, KS as the eastbound inbound crew from
Wellington exchange important points with the outbound crew
who will take #901 C-7 to Kansas City.
September 5, 1981.

3) Over Thanksgiving, I visited the folks in KC. I take
an afternoon to do some railfanning. It is a lousy cloudy
day, but I did what I could to capture an eastbound coal load
rolling through Atherton, MO.
I am assuming this is the eastbound York Canyon to Chicago
coal load. Not sure what coal trains were running over the
Transcon at this time.
November 27, 1981.

Thanks for looking.

Bob Helling
PRose

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Nice shots...#1 is great.
Thanks for sharing.
Todd Montgomery
Eugene OR

Good stuff Bob

PRose Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A few from the Santa Fe files.
>
>
> 3) Over Thanksgiving, I visited the folks in KC.
> I take
> an afternoon to do some railfanning. It is a
> lousy cloudy
> day, but I did what I could to capture an
> eastbound coal load
> rolling through Atherton, MO.
> I am assuming this is the eastbound York Canyon to
> Chicago
> coal load. Not sure what coal trains were running
> over the
> Transcon at this time.
> November 27, 1981.

This is not the York Canyon-Chicago coal train, that came
in the 90's and always had "Super Fleet" power, i.e. GE C40-8W's.
My best guess is that this is the Sibley train bound for the power
plant at the west end of the Santa Fe's Missouri River crossing at
Sibley. The contract for that plant has changed several times over
the years and I know the Santa Fe held it for some time, although
I don't know where the coal came from. Someone else is going to
have to come up with that.

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA

That crew change shot is classic! Well done!

JCL

Hey Bob, do you remember what time of day you took the crew change shot? The guy standing there looking at his watch looks a lot like me. I came in from Ark City on the 583 with the 3671, and tied up at 2:50pm that afternoon. That's the late Bill Mayer walking across the track with his grip, he was the engineer who just got off the 901. I don't recognize any of the others, but I just can't see them clearly enough.

PRose Wrote:

> 1) Santa Fe #3531 leads Train #463 Z-1 eastbound
> by the depot at Wellsville, KS just after dawn.
> May 27, 1981.

Wellsville is an interesting depot. According to A Postcard history of the Early Santa Fe Railway, it was built in 1870, and their early-days postcard shows it with board-and-batten siding and without a bay window. A handful of similar, low-roofed depots were built at various other places in central Kansas between 1870 and 1880 (Gardner and Humboldt, and possibly Harper, Milan, and Danville), and how they fit into the scheme of Santa Fe depot evolution relative to higher-roofed contemporaries like Burlingame, Osage City, and Saffordville, I just don't know.

Sneebly found the depot still trackside in July 1985:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sneebly/3521341511/in/photostream/

It was apparently eventually moved offsite and turned into a residence. The postcard book and the RRSHS database for Franklin County, Kansas say it's on Oak Grove Rd. east of Paola, KS, not visible from the road. Aerial photos on mapping sites turn up several large rectangular possibilities.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=oak+grove+road,+paola,+ks&sll=38.585478,-95.079803&sspn=0.055686,0.153809&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Oak+Grove+Rd,+Paola,+Miami,+Kansas+66071&ll=38.528704,-94.787604&spn=0.003483,0.009613&t=h&z=17

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=oak+grove+road,+paola,+ks&sll=38.585478,-95.079803&sspn=0.055686,0.153809&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Oak+Grove+Rd,+Paola,+Miami,+Kansas+66071&ll=38.562991,-94.786638&spn=0.003481,0.009613&t=h&z=17

Love that first shot! Has a real mood to it. Great stuff.
-- Eric B.