Built in 1903, in the heyday of railroads, rail cars, roads of two rails and switches and the salty smell of creosote ties and new rails being laid across what then was forty-five states, the steam engine No. 940 made its debut on the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe tracks.
The quality steam engine would spend the next forty-four years bending its back, pulling freight across Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas and Kansas. Pulling its coal car, it traveled over three-million miles delivering freight, from town to town, across daylight and dark night, snow and hot weather, rain and sunny skies.
It made hundreds of trips between Tulsa and Chanute Kansas, hauling freight through day and night, and making the night glow with its headlamp, and thousands of feet of pipe and black steel keeping it together.
In 1954, now last of the 332 models and among fifty of all steam trains put out by AT&SF, No. 940 was shipped to Bartlesville, taken on temporary tracks to Johnstone Park, suffered abuse and neglect that accompanies all things old, and left for people to see through a tall chain link fence.
It was moved in 2005 to the old railroad station in town, where children of the 50's and 60's rode trains in the morning to the Independence Kansas park, and back home in the afternoon.
The depot was closed, the No.940 still sitting on the tracks, and making history come alive again.
Ralph E Peck
No. 940 by Gary Gibson
Bartlesville, Oklahoma
Still Riding the Rails
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