Santa Fe No. 3751

Design and Construction

No. 3751 was built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in Eddystone, Pennsylvania, and delivered to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in May 1927 at a reported cost of just under $100,000. It was the first 4-8-4 type locomotive built for Santa Fe and one of the first anywhere in the country, a wheel arrangement that added a four wheel trailing truck to support a much larger firebox than earlier passenger designs could carry, and early testing showed the new locomotive was as much as 20 percent more powerful than the most advanced power already in Santa Fe’s fleet. It entered service on Santa Fe’s demanding New Mexico division, where mountain grades made its extra power valuable from the start.

Upgrade and Record Speed

Santa Fe rebuilt No. 3751 in the late 1930s with larger 80 inch drivers in place of its original 73 inch set and a higher boiler pressure, changes intended to push the locomotive’s speed capability well beyond its original design. The upgrade paid off in 1941, when No. 3751 was clocked at 103 mph, a speed record for the class and one of the fastest verified runs by a steam locomotive of this type. Through the 1930s and 1940s it worked in the top tier of Santa Fe’s passenger fleet, pulling name trains including the Chief and the Grand Canyon Limited across the railroad’s transcontinental route.

Final Revenue Service and Retirement

By the early 1950s, diesel locomotives were taking over Santa Fe’s premier assignments, and No. 3751 became part of the closing chapter of Santa Fe steam operation. On August 23, 1953, it pulled the last regularly scheduled steam powered passenger train the railroad ever ran, on the run between Los Angeles and San Diego, after which it was formally retired.

Static Display and Near Loss

Rather than being scrapped outright, No. 3751 was placed on outdoor static display in San Bernardino, California, in May 1958, in a small leased plot known as Viaduct Park near the Santa Fe yards. It sat there exposed to the elements for more than two decades, deteriorating steadily, and by the early 1980s it was seen by many observers as a strong candidate for eventual scrapping rather than restoration, the common endpoint for aging outdoor display locomotives with no organized advocate working to save them.

Rescue and Restoration

That changed in 1981, when a group of railroad enthusiasts formed the San Bernardino Railroad Historical Society for the specific purpose of saving No. 3751 and returning it to operating condition. The Society purchased the locomotive from the City of San Bernardino in 1986 for a nominal fee, commonly cited as one dollar, with the explicit condition attached to the sale that it be restored to running order rather than simply preserved as a static object. Volunteers spent the next five years rebuilding the locomotive, moving it to a shop at California Steel Industries in Fontana for the heaviest work, in a restoration that would ultimately run to roughly 1.5 million dollars, funded and largely performed by volunteer labor rather than any single institutional sponsor.

Return to Steam

A fire was lit in No. 3751’s firebox for the first time in 38 years in August 1991, and by December of that year the locomotive was back in passenger service, pulling an excursion called the California Limited between Los Angeles and Bakersfield. Since then it has operated numerous mainline excursions across Southern California and beyond under the Historical Society’s continued volunteer stewardship, becoming one of the most active operating steam locomotives on the West Coast. Like most mainline steam equipment, it has periodically come due for federally mandated inspection and overhaul; a scheduled 15 year inspection took the locomotive out of service in 2017, and the resulting overhaul was completed in September 2022, after which No. 3751 returned to excursion service.

Recognition

No. 3751 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in October 2000, formal recognition of its significance both as Santa Fe’s first 4-8-4 and as the oldest surviving locomotive of that wheel arrangement in the world. It remains based in the Los Angeles area under San Bernardino Railroad Historical Society ownership, maintained by an all volunteer crew that works on the locomotive and its support equipment on an ongoing weekly basis.