Santa Fe Engine Restoration Picks Up Steam in Fontana

George Maier’s heart sank when he was reunited with Santa Fe 3751. Rust nibbled at the fringes of its massive firebox, its smart green cab was vandalized and rotting, its boiler flue entrails lay heaped up off to one side.

“I got a little bit downhearted when I saw how some of this stuff had deteriorated away,” the retired railroad machinist said. “I had some aspirations that it might be in better shape.”

Slowly, it is getting that way.

An army of volunteers and paid laborers from as far away as Florida and Illinois has been assembled by the San Bernardino Railroad Historical Society to finish a seven-year restoration of the 1927 Baldwin 4-8-4 steam locomotive, bringing the 437-ton behemoth back to life after ignoble retirement in a San Bernardino park.

Reviving the handsome oil-burner is more than a lark, said project manager Scott Brittin of Laguna Hills. It is a way to remind people of another era--a time when America was built on a cast-steel foundation of railroads and heavy industry that was, in its own way, as clever as a computer chip.

To celebrate that legacy, the locomotive next month is scheduled to pull a train of period coaches, dining cars and lounges from Los Angeles to Sacramento, where it will join one of the largest-ever gatherings of steam engines at Railfair ‘91, the 10th anniversary celebration for the State Railroad Museum.

About 30 working steam locomotives are expected at the fair. Centennial Rail Ltd., a Denver consulting firm for tourist railroads and railway museums, has counted 1,524 steam engines in the nation, but a majority are static, non-working models on display in parks.

This new train, which will carry paying passengers to offset the $750,000 restoration cost, will be called “The California Limited” after the old Santa Fe service that ran between Los Angeles and Chicago. The California Limited, started in 1892, was Santa Fe’s first named train and the first to include a dining car.

Ironically, the train is being rebuilt in a shuttered steel mill, evidence of the sad fate of heavy industry. Railfair will coincide with the closing of the last train yard at the terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad, which opened the West and drove the state’s early growth.

When the restoration is complete early next month, Engine 3751 will be the oldest operating 4-8-4 steam locomotive in the world, the historical society said. A 4-8-4 locomotive has four small wheels at one end, eight large wheels in the center and four more small wheels under the cab. The large wheels, which drive the engine forward, are nearly seven feet in diameter.

As tall as two men and as heavy as a fleet of fully loaded tractor-trailer trucks, Engine 3751 operated on Santa Fe routes throughout the desert Southwest--including some segments of the old California Limited--for more than a quarter-century until it was retired in 1953.

After dodging the scrap heap, the engine was moved to a park in San Bernardino. Vandals and the elements ate away at it until the historical society started restoration outdoors in 1984 and, with the help of Santa Fe and California Steel Industries, moved it to the Fontana steel mill in 1986.

Because of the damage and outdated technology, the restoration process has been slow--and costly.

“There’s a lot of volunteer labor and the rest of us are working for starvation wages, and it’s still an expensive project,” said Brittin, a mechanical engineer on leave from his regular job. “Some parts may be donated, but the rest you have to buy.”

Before parts can be bought, they must be found. To preserve an authentic look, restorers have replaced old-fashioned square-head nuts and bolts with similar fasteners, eschewing readily available hexagonal-head hardware. Original boiler rivets the size of soda pop bottles were uncovered in a Kansas warehouse. Wood slats lining the cab were custom milled to match original paneling.

“A lot of detective work has gone into this,” Brittin said. “We have even had to have laboratories analyze what some of these materials are.”

The bronze in the deteriorated remains of certain bushings was studied to determine the precise ratio of copper to tin before replacements were ordered.

Salvaged and refurbished parts from the old train--a double-sided brass steam gauge here, a shiny black classification light there--are swaddled in plastic protective wrapping and awaiting reassembly in locked sheds. The pieces will be put back together once the boiler is refired and pressure-tested.

Reconstruction was made considerably easier, Brittin said, by the acquisition of an old copy of Santa Fe’s 700-page “locomotive folio,” a loose-leaf book outlining the strict procedures required for servicing the railroad’s steam locomotives. Everyone who works on the restoration reverently refers to the folio as “the Bible.”

“This material here is invaluable,” Brittin said. “It allows us not to guess, not just for historical accuracy but to make sure that what we do is sound.”

The folio meticulously sets out such minutiae as how much threads should taper and when to replace worn wheels, what kind of steel to use in making superheater header studs and who sold the best rivets.

Brittin comes by his love of the railroad naturally. His father and grandfather were station agents on the Central Vermont Railroad, and uncles on his mother’s side were pipe fitters and sheet metal workers on the Santa Fe.

“It’s like saving the Statue of Liberty or a square-rigged sailing ship,” he said, wiping grease from his hands and looking up at the stripped-down engine. “It gives people some historical perspective. . . . This is something that will be around long after I’m gone, and I hope it tells people in the future that we were willing to do something to save our heritage and not just let it disappear.”