Children at Santa Fe Railway Yard, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Children at Santa Fe Railway Yard, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Children at Santa Fe Railway Yard, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-494B62

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Two girls stand on the ballast beside the tracks at a Santa Fe Railway yard, positioned directly in front of a diesel-electric locomotive numbered 169, painted in the railroad's characteristic yellow and blue livery. The engine is a streamliner, built for passenger service and therefore too expensive to waste on freight or yard switching, yet here it sits at rest in the middle of the day while children wander past it unattended. No fence separates the tracks from the yard perimeter, no supervisor appears concerned about the girls' presence, and nobody has yet decided that a moving rail yard is anywhere children should not be. The locomotive represents the railroad's confidence in its own permanence, still believing that passenger trains would always matter enough to justify beautiful machines and that America's transportation future had already arrived and would never change.

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