Let's also remember the Santa Fe's headquarters in the beautiful Railway Exchange Building on Chicago's lakefront on the corner of East Jackson Blvd. and South Michigan Ave., opened 1904. Its interior is as lovely as its exterior, with interior offices opening onto a large open, airy sunlit "light well". I worked there as a college kid in the summer of '79 and on my first day, chose to sit on a wide marble staircase in the lobby and eat my sandwich. A security guard walked over and suggested I find another place to eat. As a dumb kid, I had no knowledge of decorum and soon understood. The giant Santa Fe letters now reside at the Illinois Railway Museum. The building houses Motorola's general office today.
Referring to multi-engine steam power, this a video of Maine Central's Mountain Division through Crawford Notch, NH. Warning, this video is over an hour long. So, grab your favorite beverage, a comfortable chair, sit back, and relax. Steam powered freight footage begins about 20 minutes in. During this segment you'll see freights pulled by a pair of steamers and pushed by one or two more as they climb the 15 mile grade that averages 2.5%. There are places where it must have been steeper listening to steam stack talk and E7 growling.
Trains being serviced and resupplied at the coach yard in Chicago in July 1958. Andreas Feininger Photo.
Wonderful and fascinating, Hank. Lot's of hard work on the railroads in those day, maintaining/servicing the steamers and few machines for the section gangs. Doug
Eastbound Santa Fe Railway passenger train making a station stop Emporia, Kansas in 1962. Henry Balinski Photo, LSRHA Collection.
Likely mail train 3 (formerly the California Ltd.) or 7, though it could be a San Francisco Chief. In any case, probably assignment B-7 out of Barstow: https://santafe.gmbus.com See passenger assignments 1961. It was a complex run. This appears to be B-6, basically the same assignment running Tehachapi in 1965.
The paint is odd, but I think it's one of the Santa Fe's snack bar/observation lounges. They appear to have had a kitchen door about there.
