Thought this might be interesting.
March 1943. "Santa Fe R.R. shops, Albuquerque . Hammering out a drawbar on the steam drop hammer in the blacksmith shop." 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information.
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That's a fascinating old shot, Lazy. Thanks.
Very nice indeed. I love those shots that give you a glimpse of the past.
It's amazing to think of what it took to maintain fleets of steam engines. Huge machine shops, a huge labor force of highly skilled machinists, and a lot of cost.
I've seen some photos to these shops when they were active - it was a truly enormous complex (and this was just one of Santa Fe's shops). In fact, in its day, these shops were the largest industrial facility in the state of New Mexico.
It would have been facinating to have toured it.
When I was growing up in Lewistown, PA, the Standard Steel Works (a division of Baldwin, Lima, Hamilton) in nearby Burnham, PA had a large mill that produced components for locomotives and freight cars. They had one of these large hammer's in one part of their complex. During the summer, when the house windows were open, if the wind was blowing the right way, I'd go to sleep listening to that hammer going "thump, thump, thump".
Curt
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