Posted on 04/30/2010 7:14:14 AM PDT by Willie Green
The Santa Fe 3751, bought for $1 by train fans in 1986, will rumble to life again this weekend, hauling passengers from L.A. to San Diego.
About 25 years ago, a group of Southern California train enthusiasts made either the best or the worst investment of their lives, depending on how you look at it.
For the grand sum of $1, they bought the Santa Fe 3751, a 430-ton locomotive that had once played a seminal role in introducing high-capacity, high-speed passenger rail service to the West. Then they set out to get the thing working again, which wound up taking five years, $1.3 million, including cash outlay and in-kind contributions, and the work of nearly 400 volunteers.
Now, the 3751 is about to make a triumphant return to the public rails, the latest turn in what has been both a glorious and tortuous history.
On May 1 and 2, the locomotive will ferry as many as 500 people between Los Angeles and San Diego, pulling 10 Amtrak cars.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
It's neat nontheless.
This is cool there is a man right down the street from me who has a Caboose on tracks in his front yard one of the original ones from way way back it’s sharp .
It burns oil. Steam trains were not very efficient burning coal. They’re a little more efficient burning oil.
3751 in 1913
You can go from Chama to Osier, and from Durango to Silverton, but you haven't been able to go the whole way in a while. The connecting track between the two was ripped up long ago.
You are correct. The BigBoys were designed in the 30’s for Union Pacific. They were designed as 4-8-8-4’s as opposed to the Santa Fe 3751 which is a 4-8-4. The BigBoys had two sets of 8 driving wheels. They were designed to pull a 3600 ton train across a 1.14% grade. Top speed was around 80mph.
My Grandfather worked for Southern Pacific for nearly 25 years. He was an engineer on the Houston to El Paso route. He ran mostly freight as opposed to the passenger Sunset limited.
Lots of great stories he could tell. Thankfully I managed to get most of them on tape before he passed away. His name was Rabbit because he liked to run fast. He started out as a brakeman but eventually worked his way up to engineer. I still have several of his old log books and watches. There is a lot of history there.
Its good to see the Santa Fe 3751 back up and running.
Yeah I remembered that after my original post, see post #12.
This engine doesn't burn coal. It burns diesel fuel (at a rate about 30 times that of a modern engine of equivalent horsepower).
A diesel-steamer instead of a coal-steamer or a diesel-electric???
LOL! Thanks for reminding me that there's more than one way to skin a cat!
I agree... it IS a cool machine!!!
I just figured you rode it before they disconnected the lines and didn’t know about it. I don’t know how long ago they were disconnected, just that they were.
I was talking to an Amtrak conductor one day and he said that the modern diesel-electric engines will easily pull 8 or more cars. The problem, he said, was that the generators are only designed to power 4 cars. They are usually pulling 6 cars and it taxes the generators.
When the bad old private railroads ran passenger trains, each car was equipped with a wheel generator which charged a bank of 32 volt storage batteries; the movement of the train kept the batteries charged. While the generator added drag to the axle, it didn't require that the locomotive be equipped with an auxiliary generator.
Thanks for posting the photo of some real “heavy metal”.
My hat is off to those who have spearheaded this project. I also have a great love for those who cars, boats and airplanes. It's a very expensive process and takes people with a particular brand of stick-to-it determination. I would love to do it but I am WAY to impatient to even be near the project. I am much more of a function person than a form person. I am more concerned that it works than how it looks. That's fine for me, but for an old train or airplane it's not a good personality!
Very cool. One of my great uncles was an engineer on the Wabash line. His “claim to fame” was that one day during WWII, he was running a troop train. He was backing the train into St. Louis Union Station, and his brakeman, who was drunk, forgot to hang the brake lantern out to stop the train, so my great uncle ended up backing the train right into the station. The cars at the end apparently went up onto the platform, and into the Station building itself. Needless to say, as the engineer and therefore responsible for the rest of the crew on his train, he lost his job.
I'm preferential to the Allegheny's myself. They burned higher-grade coal, so they made a little more power than the Bigboys, which burned the lower-grade Wyoming coal.
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