By: Kai Porter, Eyewitness News 4 <\/p>\n
Albuquerque citizens have a chance to help preserve a piece of railroad history right here in the city.<\/p>\n
The New Mexico Steam Locomotive and Railroad Historical Society are restoring a classic Santa Fe Railroad steam locomotive built in 1944.<\/p>\n
Volunteers have put in more than 125,000 hours restoring the locomotive in a downtown Albuquerque work yard.<\/p>\n
“Santa Fe ordered 30 of these locomotives and there are only 6 left in existence today,\u201d said Rick Kirby, the historical society\u2019s chief mechanical officer. \u201cThis will most likely be the only one that runs again.”<\/p>\n
Kirby says the locomotive should be up and running next spring.<\/p>\n
The city of Albuquerque acquired the locomotive in 1956 and it sat in the middle of Coronado Park until 2000 when the historical society bought it for just one dollar.<\/p>\n
Now that it’s being brought back to life the historical society desperately needs an engine house to protect it from weather and vandalism.<\/p>\n
“The engine house will protect the engine and the insulation from the all the elements,\u201d said Kirby.<\/p>\n
The society needs to raise $200,000 for the engine house, he said.<\/p>\n
One of their members will pitch in the last $100,000 if they can raise the first $100,000.<\/p>\n
Kirby says preserving this piece of railroad history is vital.<\/p>\n
“Without the steam locomotive we wouldn’t be where we are right now. Albuquerque is what it is today because of the railroad building their shops downtown.”<\/p>\n
The historical society has already raised nearly $40,000 through a gofundme account.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By: Kai Porter, Eyewitness News 4 Albuquerque citizens have a chance to help preserve a piece of railroad history right here in the city. The New Mexico Steam Locomotive and Railroad Historical Society are restoring a classic Santa Fe Railroad steam locomotive built in 1944. Volunteers have put in more than 125,000 hours restoring the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178,"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions\/178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}