Photos and Story By Ken Hulsey
Today, I was reviewing some of my old railroad-themed photography, searching for my best shots to share with the railfan community. I came across a set of images taken back in 2012 of a group of locomotives and cabooses at the BNSF facilities in La Mirada, California, on a dreary May afternoon. What makes these images unique and particularly interesting for modern railfans is that every piece of equipment I photographed was still in the colors of the old Santa Fe Railroad.
The Santa Fe has always held a special place in my heart. I used to watch Santa Fe trains outside the car window during family vacations while traveling from California to Texas and various places across the Southwest. I could spot a freight train from miles away, its bright headlight shimmering in the vast desert landscape. As I got older and started collecting model trains, almost everything I had was Santa Fe-themed. When I lived in Albuquerque, I would spend time at the depot, watching the Santa Fe in action. When I took up railroad photography, my passion for Santa Fe continued to grow.
Today, if you walk into my den, you’ll see all sorts of Santa Fe models and photographs. When these photos were taken, it was a decade and a half after the Santa Fe had merged with the Burlington Northern to form the BNSF Railroad. Over the years, equipment painted in the colors of both railroads gradually began to disappear, being replaced by the BNSF colors and logo.
When I moved back to California, I was fortunate to see equipment like this still in Santa Fe paint quite frequently, usually nestled between BNSF power on local freights or performing switching duties. This occasion, however, was unique—an entire facility populated exclusively by Santa Fe locomotives. In the past decade, these former Santa Fe units have become increasingly rare. Interestingly, BNSF has sold many of these to small line railroads across the country, so they sometimes appear in unexpected places. There’s even one in Eunice, Louisiana, though it has unfortunately been abandoned and no longer operates. I’ll share photos of that locomotive in a future post, so stay tuned.
Until then, travel back with me to La Mirada, where it felt like the Santa Fe was still in its past glory.
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