History
Railroad shops and a roundhouse were first erected on the site in the 1880s, after Albuquerque was designated as the division point between the AT&SF railway and the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. After buying out the A&P in 1902, the Santa Fe Railway began expanding and modernizing the old A&P shops in 1912. The first buildings to be completed were the roundhouse, storehouse, power station, and freight car shops, all of which were located south of the surviving complex near the present Bridge Boulevard overpass. These structures have since been demolished, but the subsequent buildings completed after 1915 are all still standing.
The current railyard buildings were constructed between 1915 and 1925. The shops became Albuquerque's largest employer, with 970 employees (then about a quarter of the city's workforce) in 1919, and a peak of 1,500 in the 1940s. The core operation was maintenance of steam locomotives, which required a complete rebuild every 12 to 18 months. At their peak, the Albuquerque shops completed around 40 such overhauls per month. However, activity at the railyard declined in the 1950s as the Santa Fe transitioned from steam to diesel locomotives. The railroad decided to locate its diesel repair facilities at the Cleburne and San Bernardino yards, scaling back operations in Albuquerque to around 200 employees. The shops were shut down completely in 1970.
Read more about this topic: Santa Fe Railway Shops (Albuquerque)
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