EXPLORING THE COMPLEX WORLD OF HISTORIC RAILWAY PRESERVATION
The carcass of Santa Fe Alco PA No. 59L arrived in Frisco, Texas, in August 2011. Still wearing faded Delaware & Hudson paint, the unit was involved in a wreck while in service in Mexico, and was stripped of most major components before it was returned to America. ROBERT WILLIS PHOTO
The 59 is Looking Fine: Restoring an Alco PA
“THIS PROJECT IS THE RAILROAD VERSION of the groups who restore World War II airplanes they’ve found frozen in ice.” Bob LaPrelle, president of the Museum of the American Railroad in Frisco, Texas, is forthright about the complexity of restoring one of only two Alco PAs still extant in the United States. “It’s doable, because the frame is intact, but we’re almost starting from the ground up.” He isn’t exaggerating. The 59L was one of a
60 FEBRUARY 2016 •
RAILFAN.COM
quartet of PAs originally owned by the Santa Fe that was eventually sold to the Nacional de Mexico in 1977. Their Mexican careers were short-lived since No. 59L and one of its sisters sustained serious damage in a wreck in 1981, exaggerated by a careless cleanup. All four decayed even further during two decades of storage. The sun faded the Champlain blue and silver paint that second owner Delaware & Hudson had applied and the NdeM never retouched. The prime mover and trucks were stripped away piece by piece, and vandals tagged the cab with further indignities. By the time a campaign headed up by the Smithsonian Institute’s Bill Withuhn and Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation’s Doyle McCormack succeeded in convincing the Mexican government to allow repatriation of 59L and 62L, it took a discerning eye to recognize them as a member of the class which the Santa Fe had paraded in New York City and Los Angeles upon their delivery in 1948. Both units initially went to Portland, Ore., but the Smithsonian found it was unable to dedicate resources to restore and display the 59L. An ultimatum was at hand — find an organization to take on the 59L, or render it into scrap. After a frantic search, the Museum of the American Railroad, at the time located in Dallas, Texas, stepped up to the plate. Despite its pitiable condition, LaPrelle and the rest of the museum’s management sensed beauty lurking within the mangled frame.
They established an ambitious vision for the locomotive’s future that far exceeded the Smithsonian’s original plans: Restore the 59L in its original Santa Fe colors and to return it to running condition. The project is daunting, but doable.
Since 2000, McCormack and his crew of volunteers have rehabilitated the 62L to near-operable condition as a replica of Nickel Plate Road No. 190. Tangible progress on the 59L’s restoration has been much slower to materialize, though. Starting in 2008, the Museum of the American Railroad prioritized moving its entire location to a much more expansive campus in Frisco, a suburb to the north of Dallas. The long-term plans for the new grounds include much more space for the museum to host events and undertake projects, but moving the entire collection and the initial phases of construction sapped away the money and volunteer resources that might otherwise have gone towards restoration projects. There are still years of construction ahead
before the Museum of the American Railroad emerges in its final form, but in the two years since the last pieces of the collection arrived in Frisco, the organization has reinvented itself as a valuable community education asset. It has ensured a steady source of income from providing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education programs for school districts in the Dallas- Fort Worth area and from well-attended walking tours of the collection. The situation became stable enough that other projects could parallel the later stages of construction, and city officials challenged the museum to begin some sort of restoration project. Since the 59L had a world-wide fan base and was most in need of immediate attention, it was identified as the most viable candidate. In 2015, the first tangible progress on the 59L’s restoration arrived.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74