Nostalgia & History > Toto Tuesday: Santa Fe Boxcars get retired (again...)

...this time permanently!

It's an undeniable (& melancholy) fact of the state of modern railroading that wayside landmarks are disappearing at an alarming rate. These landmarks include of course towers, depots & signal bridges. But they also include former RR customer structures such as factories, warehouses & grain elevators. Three cheers for all the RR pencil-pushers & bean counters for wanting to make their property as sterile as possible (read: completely devoid of anything that could possibly be taxed)!!! The same thing goes for the growing multitude of closed businesses along the country's RR infrastructure.
(If you detect a tiny note of sarcasm, you're dead right. But hey... business is business.)

I've made several railfanning treks in the last couple of years down on the BNSF transcon/half-con/semi-con (thanks fbe, you just made my writing job a little harder!). I can't help but notice the deterioration of the long inactive grain elevator at Saffordville, KS. It has always made an interesting background when shooting trains. But now it is apparently being dismantled in its entirety.

For years, actually decades this trackside area has had retired Santa Fe boxcars as part of the elevator complex. And they are fast disappearing, victims of a welder's torch. It was yet another jolt of reality when I realized these boxcars were not long for this world. My railfan world... the world I've been photographing for 36 years. I had presence of mind 34 of those years ago to shoot the boxcars at Saffordville. And long before me came a Santa Fe engineer who wasn't exactly a railfan, but who was apt to point a camera at just about anything. R. L. (Bob) George (probably deceased) was long retired when I hired out in 1978. In 1980 he let me copy a handful of slides from his eclectic collection. Among those I copied is shot #1 showing the Saffordville area after the 1951 flood. Also graciously contributing to this story with 3 shots from 2010 is Zach Pumphrey ("UPTRAIN" on TO).

Let's take a peek at a 61 year span of retired Santa Fe boxcar history at Saffordville, KS.

1. Saffordville, KS as it looked from US hwy 50 in the aftermath of the Great Kansas Flood of 1951. (R. L. George photograph, looking generally south)

2. Retired AT&SF boxcar 4031 (looking north across the middle & north mains) at Saffordville on August 14, 1978.
The boxcar behind it is AT&SF 10664, the subject of shots #7 & #8.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/22 23:24 by santafe199.

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3. & 4. The 4031 is still resting faithfully next to its longtime companion, retired AT&SF boxcar 10664. "Til death do us part"...
(photos by Zach Pumphrey on September 8, 2010)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/22 23:25 by santafe199.

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5. BNSF 7561 runs by the idle Saffordville elevator complex. The beginning of the end of the elevator is plainly seen.
(photo by Zach Pumphrey on September 8, 2010)

6. Amtrak 71 is eastbound at Saffordville with the private car owners' special on October 19, 2011. The boxcar from shot #2, AT&SF 4031 is still visible
to the west of the elevator.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/22 23:26 by santafe199.

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7. Saffordville as it looks from "old hwy 50" circa June 2012. I'm pretty sure this is the same vantage point where Mr. George took shot #1.
The 4031 is now gone.

8. Retired AT&SF boxcar 10664 is fixin' to get retired again, this time permanently...
(shots #7 & #8 taken June 21, 2012)

Thanks for looking back & forth!
Lance Garrels (santafe199)
Zach Pumphrey (UPTRAIN)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/22 23:28 by santafe199.

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Photobob hit the nail on the head when he said that "It's all crap now".
I'm old enough to remember when railroads had a human presence in every town with a depot and operator, when they had a "plant" of buildings and when they had a personality. 40' cars with roofwalk, water tanks and cranes, coal chutes, oil cranes, towers, roundhouses and everything else it took to run a railroad. And of course, steam.
Contemporary railroading bores me to tears and I actually get aggravated when I get stuck at a crossing because it's always the same of crap. Some painted boxes on the head end, coal train and a painted box on the hind end. Oh boy!
Sorry younger folk, I wish you could have seen it back then.

nice post, bud
gotta love the lowly boxcar!

AT@SF 4031 was a former mail and express car painted into later gray scheme. It probably traveled many miles on 7-8 and 3-4. Probably retired due to a broken center sill, or other structural defect. In any case it would be still use full as a stationary building.The late Lee Berglund pointed out to me 20+ years ago that many of the prairie skyscraper elevators are vanishing and they need to be recorded. I took his advice to heart and now when I see one, I stop and photograph it. I only wish I had done that 40+ years ago. I am not sure it all crap now,but its getting close.

It's a shame to see 4301 go - that gray paint was a reminder that it wasn't any old boxcar, but one of 300 former Fe-24 class double door boxcars that were equipped to run in passenger trains as express boxcars. Unfortunately, we can't possibly save everything. The best we can try for is a representative sample, and take lots of pictures of the rest...

santafe199 Wrote:

> It's an undeniable (& melancholy) fact of the
> state of modern railroading that wayside landmarks
> are disappearing at an alarming rate.

Drop "modern" from that statement, and I think you've got it. There was quite a blood-letting on Santa Fe's physical plant in the 70's and 80's with the closure of small town agencies and demolition of roundhouses and other "underutilized" facilities. Then there were all the coal chutes and water facilities that went away with the end of steam in the 50's. And the manual block towers on the original main that vanished in the 20's and 30's in favor of lifeless automatic signals. And those ugly, featureless steel water tanks that replaced the quaint wooden ones around the turn of the 20th century. And...and...and...

I have tried repeatedly to convince the board of the rail museum at Barstow to acquire one of the many boxcars being retired and dismantled at Barstow, rehab it and put it on display at the museum. Most of the visitors to the museum have no idea what a boxcar looks like inside or what an important part of the nation's commerce they carried. Besides that, Santa Fe is regularly cutting up boxcars at Barstow that were built well after I went to work for the raiload in 1961. Ouch!!

Norm

Evan_Werkema Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Drop "modern" from that statement, and I think
> you've got it. There was quite a blood-letting on
> Santa Fe's physical plant in the 70's and 80's
> with the closure of small town agencies and
> demolition of roundhouses and other
> "underutilized" facilities. Then there were all
> the coal chutes and water facilities that went
> away with the end of steam in the 50's. And the
> manual block towers on the original main that
> vanished in the 20's and 30's in favor of lifeless
> automatic signals. And those ugly, featureless
> steel water tanks that replaced the quaint wooden
> ones around the turn of the 20th century.
> And...and...and...


Absolutely. Modern has little to do with it. This is just how things happen. Things change, things go away and eventually new things come in their place. Nothing new about that process.

Z

Evan_Werkema Wrote:

> Drop "modern" from that statement, and I think
> you've got it.................

Point taken, with undeniable testimony....

I think I would have been most fascinated with the physical plant as a railfan in general & a Santa Fe fan in particular a generation or two ago. Signals, towers, depots EVERYWHERE. Some of the left-over stuff I can dimly remember seeing in the railroad scene as a youngster in the 60's. I look at BNSF (& UP) property today and it does look starkly naked in comparison...

Lance

Tell me about it --- the vanishing pole line alone says it all ;(

After all..the whole idea of a locomotive was to pull revenue
'box cars' behind it...

aronco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have tried repeatedly to convince the board of
> the rail museum at Barstow to acquire one of the
> many boxcars being retired and dismantled at
> Barstow, rehab it and put it on display at the
> museum. Most of the visitors to the museum have
> no idea what a boxcar looks like inside or what an
> important part of the nation's commerce they
> carried. Besides that, Santa Fe is regularly
> cutting up boxcars at Barstow that were built well
> after I went to work for the raiload in 1961.
> Ouch!!
>
> Norm

Yes, some other museums have preserved boxcars and they tell a great story of how our world used to work. Part of the problem with many people not being convinced of the need to preserve an old boxcar is that there are plenty of boxcars still plying the rails today. The problem is that the boxcars today are not utilized like they were a generation or two or three ago. It is fascinating to see a well done display (Steamtown and the Pennsylvania railroad museum have great displays) that makes you get a sense of what life used to be like. Isn't that the purpose of a museum?

Lance,
Something don't fit right here. In your earlier pics, you show a old run down elevator and in #7 you say that was taken in June 2011. It looks like it is being used in # 7 with the wheat truck in front of it. I think that is a lot older pic. because the earlier pics. of the elevator hasn't been used for some time. upkpfan

upkpfan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Lance,
> Something don't fit right here. In your earlier
> pics, you show a old run down elevator and in #7
> you say that was taken in June 2011. It looks like
> it is being used in # 7 with the wheat truck in
> front of it. I think that is a lot older pic.
> because the earlier pics. of the elevator hasn't
> been used for some time. upkpfan

Well, they're still using it for something. On Tuesday,
there were a couple of guys walking around, and a truck
parked on the east end. And, there's still trackage on
the south side, between the elevator and the mains, although
I don't think it's been used in quite a while.

Lance, you must gave gone back and gotten that after we'd
been there. Good idea.

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA

And, for years, the old grey box still had it's marker lamp brackets on the corners.