Santa Fe Railway Shops, Albuquerque

The massive brick complex visible south of downtown Albuquerque was once the engine that built the city. The Atlantic and Pacific Railroad established repair shops here in the eighteen eighties, and by nineteen twelve the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway had expanded them into one of only four major locomotive maintenance facilities in the entire system. The shops covered the Barelas neighborhood with eighteen buildings erected between nineteen fifteen and nineteen twenty-five, and the railway became Albuquerque's largest employer.

Historians credit the railroad, more than any other single factor, with transforming Albuquerque from a farming village of a few hundred people into a commercial and industrial city. The shops ran full steam until the nineteen fifties, when diesel replaced steam engines and the workload collapsed. After decades of vacancy the complex has been redeveloped as a public market, arts space, and event venue, giving the old rail yard a second life.