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You are in the CarrTracks website Picture Gallery. Picture Gallery of Santa Fe Railway trains on the Transcon in Arizona |
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I have made multiple trips taking pictures of the Santa Fe between Barstow and Clovis, NM. My early trips were during leave from the Navy in the 70s. While working in Dallas in the late 80s, I helped several Christian agencies promoting literacy among the Navajo. They were teaching the Navajo to read and write their own language. Most of the agencies were located in Flagstaff or near Gallup and were using computers running DOS. Remember that old operating system? At the time, I was teaching a computer course for beginners that included programs capable of keyboarding, displaying, and printing letters in languages other than English. So while driving from Dallas to Flagstaff and back, I had the opportunity to chase trains along the busy Santa Fe mainline. This gallery follows the Santa Fe across Arizona from east to west and has 127 pages and 304 pictures. |
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In the good old days (50 years ago) on the Second District (Gallup to Winslow) there were train order offices at Chambers and Holbrook. Steam engines could take water at Chambers, Adamana, and Holbrook. On the Third District there were train order offices at Canyon Diablo, Flagstaff, Bellemont, Williams, and Ash Fork. Steam engines could take water at Angell, Flagstaff, Bellemont, Williams, McLellen westbound, Corva eastbound, and Ash Fork. On the Kingman District there were train order offices at Nelson, Peach Springs, Hackberry, Kingman, and Yucca. Steam engines could take water at Pica, Peach Springs, Hackberry, Kingman, and Yucca. |
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As we move to the area west of Winslow you will see some unique operations on the Albuquerque Division. One of those is block swapping (described later in this series) and the other is the shift from left hand running to right hand running. When the Santa Fe installed double track it built a flyover west of Ash Fork that automatically shifted the railroad from left hand running east of that point to right hand running. When the railroad built the Crookton Cut-off it eliminated the flyover. Before CTC was installed east of Winslow and west of Seligman, the dispatcher had to switch trains form one pattern to the other. You will see many pictures of train shifting between the north and south main tracks. Sometimes this move is to return trains to the normal flow of traffic and sometimes it is to let a faster train run around a slower one. For those modeling the Santa Fe in the late 60s, the library contains a series of pages with detailed freight train consists. The trains featured on those pages were observed at Winslow and Barstow. Lupton |
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