Sunday April 9th 2017

Today’s theme was trains. I saw old trains, new trains, big trains and small trains. All on my exploration of this part of route 66.

I started the day at the Arizona Powerhouse Route 66 Museum in downtown Kingman. The building was the home of the first power generating plant in this part of the country. It served the greater Kingman area from 1907 until the Hoover dam power plant opened in 1938. The building also holds the destination of being the first reinforced concrete building in the state.

Arizona Powerhouse Route 66 Museum

The Powerhouse building contains an information desk, gift shop, an overview of route 66 and the Arizona Route 66 Museum. I didn’t explore the museum. At the time, I thought it was an electric car museum. It was only when I was checking a couple of things on the internet for this blog entry that I learned the electric cars were only a small portion of the museum’s exhibits. I enjoyed the parts that weren’t behind the museum door. That’s where I saw my first train of the day. A very large old model train with route 66 era landscapes was routed around the 2nd floor area.

Steam Locomotive retired from the Santa Fe line in 1953.

Not a place I’d want to stand when this engine was operational.

Across the street from the museum is Locomotive park. It is the home of steam engine that made the run from Kansas City and Los Angles until 1953 on the Santa Fe line. Kingman was a water stop on the route. This is an impressive engine. The drive wheels are bigger in diameter than I am tall. They are 80 inches in diameter.

Caboose attached to the engine and tender.

After the museum and Locomotive park, I drove out route 66 to the east. Unlike the road to the west of town, this portion of route 66 is a modern secondary road. I drove about 40 miles to the northeast before turning around. The road crosses the desert then climbs over and between ridge lines. There were interesting rock formations beside the road in the mountainous areas, but by far the most interesting thing was the train tracks that paralleled the road.

During my drive I saw six freight trains. Four were east bound and two were west bound. Each train was more than a mile long. They had three or four engines at the front and some had one or two engines at the rear. Most of the trains had a mixture of tank cars and modern box cars, but two of the biggest were packed 2 levels high with inter-modal containers. The containers could go from the train to truck transports or right onto a ship. I am not used to seeing so many trains this large. In the northeast they are traveling shorter distances carrying less.

Tomorrow I pack up and move one hundred plus miles up the road to Las Vegas. I’ll be there for two weeks.