Santa Fe No. Two Nine Two Six

Near Eighth Street and Haines Avenue in Albuquerque sits one of the largest steam locomotives ever built and one of the most lovingly restored. Santa Fe Number Two Nine Two Six is a four-eight-four Northern type engine built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in nineteen forty-four, weighing more than nine hundred thousand pounds when fully loaded. It pulled both freight and passengers across the Southwest until its last revenue run on December twenty-fourth, nineteen fifty-three, then spent decades deteriorating in a city park, used as a jungle gym, vandalized, and filled with asbestos.

In nineteen ninety-nine volunteers from the New Mexico Steam Locomotive and Railroad Historical Society took ownership. After one hundred sixty-six thousand hours of labor and two point eight million dollars spent over twenty-two years, they fired the boiler in twenty eighteen and ran the locomotive under its own steam in twenty twenty-one.