Nostalgia & History > Depot Friday: Topeka 52 years ago, oh my!

We’re in the Capitol City of Kansas on the 6th St overpass looking NNE, right up the main track at a passenger station that goes by the catchy name of “Topeka”. You may have heard this name a time or 2 in the past. It was used in some larger railroad name. A trio of city names: 2 in Kansas and 1 in New Mexico. You know! The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe. Ring a bell? You may also have heard this RR name in a song sung by Judy Garland in a 1946 movie called Harvey Girls. The song name: “(On the) Atchison, Topeka & (the) Santa Fe”.

“Do ya hear that whistle down the line?
I figure that it's engine number forty nine
She's the only one that'll sound that way
On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe”

1. AT&SF passenger depot & platform area in Topeka, KS as seen from that 6th St overpass through the lens of one Art Gibson aka WAG Jr, who will later come to be known as “wag216” on some future technology known as a “website”…
Photo date: March 19, 1966.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/22 20:41 by santafe199.

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Good grief, Charlie Brown!!! How things have changed! We’re still in the Capitol City of Kansas on the same 6th St overpass. But now we have a pair of alternate views that might as well be from some alternate universe. The 1950s style passenger depot is now alone in a space-like vacuum of departed ghosts. In the immediate left hand foreground the REA buildings, attendant vans and the rest of the railfan eye-candy have been erased. On the right the third track out from the depot has been taken up, and many tracks in the yard have been reworked or removed, especially north of the 4th St crossing. Those cute little yard shanties are gone. On the left side just off 4th St the iconic Yard office/freight building is gone. In the far left hand background all the grain elevators have been razed. A crane & wrecking ball is working on the one in front literally as I shot the pic. And that smoke stack with the classic SFe blue & white Circle-Cross on it is purposely out of frame in my 2 images because it now has a Nike rip-off orange swoosh-lookin’ thing on it…

“Do ya hear that air-horn down the line?
I figure that it's engine fifty forty nine
She's the only one that'll sound that way
On the Burlington Northern Santa Fe”

2. & 3. Two views looking due north & northeast respectively. Lots of neat stuff missing in my viewfinder…
Photo date: October 15, 2011.

Thanks for looking back & forth!
Lance Garrels (santafe199)
Art Gibson (wag216)

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Great comparison-thanks for the 1966 view. Demolition continues around the Topeka rail scene.

Right before urban re-new and & the June 8th tornado changed that corner of Topeka forever.

Posted from Android

Love these 'overview' yard pics, always so much to see!

Thanks for posting this. Brings back lots of memories. Maybe wag216 will have to help with this, but I thought there was a slip switch there by the passenger station. It was referred to as "the puzzle." The yardmaster would often tell crews to leave their power by (or at) the puzzle. But I don't see anything that looks like a slip switch in the 1966 photo.

Thanks for sharing the images and the history ...

Appreciate your perspective of then vs now ...

Odyssey
Evergreen, CO

Shame they tore down the beautiful Missouri Pacific station just out of the frame to the left.