National Register Listing

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Locomotive Shops

a.k.a. Albuquerque Rail Yards

Roughly bounded by BNSF RR, 1st & 2nd Sts., Albuquerque, NM

The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company’s (AT&SF) former steam locomotive shops, constructed between 1914 and 1925, occupy a 27-acre parcel on 2nd Street between Atlantic Avenue and Cromwell Avenue SW in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The land is nearly level and surrounded on three sides by railroad tracks and yards. On the west side it is flanked by a residential neighborhood. The shops were designed for major overhauls of steam locomotives,while daily locomotive repair and maintenance were based in the roundhouse. The shops, which include 21 contributing resources, are the largest historic industrial facility in New Mexico.Located on a long polygonal-shaped site, the shops are organized around two, large east-to-west oriented boiler and machine shop buildings with three additional shops joined to the boiler shop on the north side of the complex. Locomotives were moved across the site by a transfer table,which consisted of a depressed concrete structure, and two steel transfer decks located between the two major buildings. The machine shop retains a 250-ton-capacity overhead bridge crane and two smaller 15-ton bridge cranes. The boiler shop retains another 250-ton capacity crane.On the exterior of the machine shop, a crane runway carries another 15-ton capacity bridge crane. The south side of the complex includes smaller buildings that supported the shops operations, as well as the foundation of the former roundhouse, with an operational turntable and associated tracks. Monumental-scale facades of reinforced concrete in the Classical Revival-style front the dominant buildings: the machine, boiler, and tender repair shops. The sides of these tall single-story, steel frame buildings are full-length glass-curtain walls. The blacksmith shop has a steel structural frame set inside brick walls with large banks of windows. Brick also walled three smaller buildings. Reinforced concrete provides walls to seven buildings, including the storehouse and flue shop, and two structures, the water reservoir and fire runway. The fire station employs ashlar sandstone walls in a rustic version of the Mediterranean Revival style. The remaining buildings employ materials in a functional, un-ornamented manner. The sheetmetal house has a wood-timber frame with board-and-batten siding.

Local significance of the district:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 2014.